Court authorises E Jean Carroll to collect $8.4 million damages award from Trump

A US judge has authorised the payment of a multimillion-dollar verdict to magazine writer E Jean Carroll to satisfy a 2023 civil verdict in which a jury found US President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.

District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Wednesday (early Thursday AEST) ordered the disbursement of nearly $US5.8 million ($8.35 million) to the former Elle magazine columnist, representing the original $US5 million ($7.2 million) verdict plus interest.

The funds had been held in escrow while Trump appealed the verdict, but the US Supreme Court on June 29 declined to take up the case.

Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Carroll had no immediate comment.

In a Tuesday night (Wednesday AEST) court filing, Trump’s lawyers said Carroll should wait until the Supreme Court reviews Trump’s renewed bid to overturn the verdict.

The lawyers said Trump would be irreparably harmed and face “unrecoverable loss” if Carroll fulfils her stated intention to give away the money, because once she does the money likely could not be recovered.

They also said letting Carroll recover, only to have the Supreme Court grant a rehearing, would “undermine public confidence in an orderly judicial process” at a time when Trump’s supporters and some critics, according to his lawyers, voice “concerns about politically motivated weaponisation of the legal system”.

Trump submitted a petition to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to rehear his appeal. The Supreme Court rarely takes up appeals after initially turning them down.

Carroll, 82, and Trump, 80, have battled in court for nearly seven years, after the former Elle magazine advice columnist accused him of raping her about 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan.

Trump has rejected Carroll’s claims as a “hoax” and “con job”, denying he knew her and saying she made up the alleged rape to help sell her memoir.

Jurors awarded Carroll the $US5 million ($7.2 million) based on a Trump denial in 2022, though they did not find that Trump raped her.

A different jury in January 2024 ordered Trump to pay Carroll $US83.3 million ($119.95 million) in damages based on his original denial in 2019, which occurred during his first White House term. Trump has said he deserves presidential immunity for that denial.

The Manhattan-based Second US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to throw out the $US83.3 million ($119.95 million) verdict last September.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).