President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to review a New York civil jury’s 2023 conclusion that he was liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.
Mr. Trump is seeking to wipe away a $5 million verdict after two years of failed efforts to win a retrial of the federal case, calling Carroll’s claims “implausible” and arguing testimony stretched “credulity past the breaking point.” He has since promised to challenge the case all the way to the nation’s highest court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied Mr. Trump’s appeal in December 2024, and in June rejected a request for an en banc review, in which all the judges on the court consider the case.
The Supreme Court is now his last hope of overturning the jury’s unanimous verdict. The jury found that a preponderance of evidence supported Carroll’s claim that Mr. Trump sexually abused her during a mid-1990s encounter in a New York City department store, sticking his fingers into her vagina.
The jury rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped, though the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, later wrote that the conclusion that Mr. Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll by forcefully inserting his fingers was an “implicit determination that Mr. Trump digitally raped her.”
Mr. Trump claims Kaplan “erred” in several evidentiary rulings that affected Mr. Trump’s standing with the jury.
His appeal calls Carroll’s claims “facially implausible, politically motivated allegations.”
A spokesman for his legal team tied the case to others pursued against Mr. Trump during the years between his presidencies.
“The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes,” the spokesman said. “President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again.”
An attorney for Carroll did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Carroll’s legal team received some of its funding from a nonprofit tied to a Democratic megadonor, but has said in legal filings Carroll was not involved in obtaining the outside funds, which they received nearly a year after she filed her first lawsuit. They’ve said the funding was irrelevant to her sexual abuse and defamation claims.
Mr. Trump has denied Carroll’s allegations since they first surfaced in 2019, when she went public with a book excerpt published in New York Magazine.
He has also appealed a separate federal jury verdict in January 2024 that found him liable for making further defamatory statements against Carroll. Combined, the two juries awarded Carroll more than $88 million.
