The US Supreme Court has closed the final legal route for Donald Trump to overturn a $5m (£3.6m) verdict that found he sexually abused and defamed writer E Jean Carroll – a decision that means the president must now pay the damages.
The court gave no explanation for its refusal to hear Trump’s appeal, as is customary. The move ends a legal battle that began in 2023 when a New York jury awarded Carroll the sum over her civil claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s in a Manhattan department store, and then branded the incident a hoax on social media.
“US Supreme Court rejects Donald Trump’s final appeal, ordering him to pay $5m for sexually abusing E Jean Carroll.”
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said the ruling “affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E Jean Carroll”. She added: “His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions.”
Trump, who has denied the allegations throughout, responded with a lengthy post on Truth Social, vowing to continue to fight what he called a “Weaponization and Lawfare Case” and “the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength”. He said the case was “really against the United States of America, and all it stands for” and should “never be allowed to happen to another President”. In a reference to a law that extended the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims, he wrote: “New York State created a Law, for an instant speck of time, going back many decades, in order to wrongfully ‘nab’ me. It was tailormade, and this Injustice cannot be allowed to stand!”
Trump’s lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to review the case, arguing that the trial judge improperly allowed jurors to see the 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which Trump was heard bragging about groping and kissing women. A federal appeals court had already upheld the jury’s unanimous verdict last year.
The Supreme Court’s rejection marks Trump’s final hope of overturning the ruling. While the jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation, it rejected Carroll’s claim of rape as defined under New York’s penal code.
Separately, a different jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83m for defaming her, and that decision was also upheld on appeal in September. Carroll, now 81, originally sued Trump over the alleged attack in the 1990s.