Donald Trump has lost his latest legal attempt to challenge the $5m in damages awarded against him for defaming E Jean Carroll, the New York writer who a jury found was sexually abused by the president in the 1990s, before he embarked on his political career.
A US appeals court in New York City on Friday denied Trump’s request to reconsider its decision in December to uphold the jury’s award of $5m to Carroll. The court was divided in its opinion, with two Trump-appointed judges, Steven Menashi and Michael Park, dissenting.
Carroll, a former magazine columnist, accused Trump of attacking her around 1996 in a department store dressing room in Manhattan. In 2023, a civil jury trial concluded that Trump did sexually abuse her and then defamed her in 2022 when he denied the allegations as a hoax and said that Carroll was “not my type”.
The jury awarded Carroll, who is now 81, a total of $5m in compensatory and punitive damages. More than two dozen different women have accused Trump over the past decade of sexual assault.
Trump, who has denied all allegations against him, argued that the trial judge in the Carroll case should not have let jurors review the notorious 2005 Access Hollywood video of him bragging about groping women and that his alleged mistreatment of two other women also should not have been included. The emergence of the Access Hollywood tape was a bombshell in the closing stages of the 2016 presidential election but did not derail Trump’s campaign. He beat Democrat Hillary Clinton to win the White House and, after losing to Joe Biden in 2020, triumphed again in 2024 and began a second term in January.
The president, who turns 79 on Saturday, is appealing a separate $83m jury award to Carroll for defaming her and harming her reputation when he denied her claim in 2019. In Trump’s appeal against this January 2024 ruling, the president is arguing that the US supreme court’s decision to provide sweeping legal immunity to presidents should shield him for liability in this instance, too.
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan issued a statement later on Friday, saying: “E Jean Carroll is very pleased with today’s decision. Although President Trump continues to try every possible maneuver to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have failed. He remains liable for sexual assault and defamation.”
