The high court had previously rejected President Trump’s appeal in a related case.
Department of Justice launches investigation into E. Gene Carroll
The Justice Department’s investigation focuses on whether E. Jean Carroll committed perjury in her testimony against President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to vacate an $83.3 million jury award ordered to be paid to author E. Jean Carroll, arguing the ruling could leave him permanently fearing civil liability for his actions while in office.
“If left unaddressed, the following decisions will cause grave harm not only to this president and future presidents, but also to ‘the country the presidency was designed to serve,'” Trump’s lawyers said in a July 28 filing. “As this court has recognized, if a president fears that his official actions may result in liability for damages, this would “significantly impede the proper and effective administration of government.”
But the court has already rejected Trump’s appeal in a related case involving more than $5 million that a jury said Trump owed Carroll.
Both lawsuits are part of a legal battle between Trump and Carroll that dates back to 2019 and includes two civil lawsuits.
Carroll said in 2019 that Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store in 1996, and Trump fired back with claims that she was making up the story to sell a book.
Carroll sued him several months later and was ultimately awarded $83.3 million in damages.
While the lawsuit was ongoing, President Trump reiterated his denial in a 2022 social media post. Carroll then sued Trump again under the special statute of limitations granted to victims of sexual abuse in New York, and in 2023, a New York jury found Trump responsible for sexually abusing Carroll. This resulted in a $5 million judgment.
A federal appeals court upheld both decisions.
President Trump has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its rejection of his appeal of the $5 million judgment, but this step is unlikely to succeed.
Carroll’s attorney declined to comment on Trump’s latest filing.
But after rejecting Trump’s appeal of the trial court’s ruling in September, New York-basedn.d. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the $83.3 million judgment was reasonable “in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case.” The court said the starting point for the retrial is “the now indisputable fact that a jury found (in a separate case) that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll in 1996,” which precludes a new appeal.
“The record in this case supports the district court’s finding that the ‘reprehensible’ nature of Mr. Trump’s conduct was extremely high and perhaps unprecedented,” the appeals court wrote in its opinion.
The appeals court said Trump’s repeated comments about Carroll resulted in “numerous death threats and other threats of physical harm.” The jury found that Trump would not stop defaming Carroll unless he was fined a large amount of money, the court continued.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that Trump should be excused for his 2019 comments about Carroll because they were made while he was president.
“The use of the president’s public statements is important because this court has made clear that the president’s official actions cannot be used as evidence to impose liability for other actions,” his lawyers told the justices, referring to a 2024 court ruling that held the president cannot be criminally prosecuted for his “official” actions.
