Donald Trump is calling on the Supreme Court to throw out a multi-million dollar verdict after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming E Jean Carroll.
Trump’s request — among more than two dozen appeals the president and his administration have made to the nation’s highest court within the last year — calls Carroll’s case “facially implausible” and “politically motivated.”
A federal jury in New York awarded the former Elle magazine writer $5 million in 2022 after finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Last year, a separate jury returned a verdict awarding her $83.3 million in damages for the president’s defamatory statements during his first term in office and in the years that followed.
Trump was accused of repeatedly defaming Carroll by claiming he had never met her, branding her a liar and denying that he had sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store in the 1990s.
A federal appeals court upheld the $5 million judgment last year, and in September, the court refused to toss out the second verdict, saying Trump had “failed to identify any grounds” to reconsider the case on the grounds of presidential immunity. That verdict was “fair and reasonable” given the “unique and egregious facts of this case,” judges wrote.
Trump’s latest appeal to the Supreme Court involves that initial verdict, which the president’s lawyers claim was fueled by Carroll’s attempt to “maximize political injury to him and profit for herself.”
The 33-page petition claims “no physical or DNA evidence corroborates Carroll’s story,” nor are there “eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation.”
“Instead, Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after became the 45th president, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself,” according to lawyers with the James Otis Law Group, which is representing the president.
The team accused Carroll of concocting a story that “matches the plotline from an episode of one of admittedly her favorite TV shows, Law & Order.”
Lawyers for Carroll told The Independent that her legal team is not commenting at this time.
Trump sued ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos after he incorrectly said the jury found Trump “liable for rape” rather than sexual abuse, though the trial judge overseeing the that case explained that the difference is largely a semantic one.
“The finding that Ms Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote at the time. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial … makes clear,” he said, “the jury found that Mr Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Alina Habba represented Trump during the Carroll trials. Trump then appointed her acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey.
The Carroll verdicts added to a tidal wave of litigation against the president after leaving the White House and campaigning for a second term, including criminal convictions for falsifying business records and a massive fraud judgment putting him on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars.
He avoided any consequences after his conviction in the criminal case in Manhattan, and he has successfully appealed a part of the fraud judgment. Two sweeping federal indictments over his attempts to overturn election results and withhold classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate were also dismissed after he won back the presidency.
Since then, Trump has launched a campaign of “retribution” on a legal warpath that is taking aim at not only overturning the verdicts but also prosecuting those involved in investigations against him.
The president is pushing state and federal courts to overturn a jury’s verdict in the hush money trial, which found that the president illegally used his business to cover up payments to an adult film star to bury politically embarrassing stories about him.
Trump is also appealing a blockbuster fraud ruling after a trial determined the president grossly inflated his net worth and assets to attract favorable financing terms to boost his brand-building real estate empire.
Meanwhile, he instructed his Attorney General Pam Bondi to quickly pursue federal indictments against Letitia James, who brought the fraud case against the president, as well as longtime foes James Comey and Adam Schiff.
Trump’s Justice Department is also pursuing a conspiracy case against former officials and other political opponents who previously investigated him.
