A federal judge has ordered the release of nearly $5.8 million to E. Jean Carroll, clearing the way for her to collect on a 2023 jury verdict that found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing her in the 1990s and defaming her after she went public with the allegation. The ruling came after the U.S. Supreme Court declined last month to hear Trump's appeal, a decision the president called "weaponization and lawfare."
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan directed that the original $5 million jury award, plus interest that has accrued since the verdict, be disbursed to Carroll's attorneys. Trump's legal team moved almost immediately to block the payout, filing a notice of appeal to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals within an hour of the ruling, according to the Washington Examiner.
The case has become one of the most politically charged civil disputes in modern presidential history, a lawsuit built on decades-old allegations, enabled by a retroactive change to New York's statute of limitations, and litigated while the defendant occupied and then returned to the White House. For Trump and his supporters, the ruling is the latest chapter in a legal strategy they view as designed from the start to target one man.
Carroll, now 82, alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in 1996. She did not go public with the claim until 2019, when she described the incident in a memoir, while Trump was serving as president.
The civil suit became possible only after New York passed a law creating a temporary window in the statute of limitations for older sexual abuse claims. Trump has called that law "tailormade" to target him. A Manhattan jury in 2023 found Trump liable and awarded Carroll $5 million, later supplemented by accruing interest to reach the $5.8 million figure. Trump did not attend that trial.
A separate Manhattan jury in January 2024 granted Carroll an additional $83 million in defamation compensation. Trump briefly testified at that proceeding. Judge Kaplan presided over both trials and, at the January 2024 proceeding, required the jury to accept the findings of the earlier jury and only determine how much additional money, if any, Trump owed Carroll for statements he made about her while serving as president.
That instruction alone raises questions about how much independent judgment the second jury was permitted to exercise. The $83 million verdict remains under appeal.
The Supreme Court declined without explanation on June 29 to hear Trump's appeal of the original $5 million verdict. Just The News reported that Trump responded on Truth Social with a lengthy statement rejecting the case as illegitimate:
"Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to 'review' a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met... I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength."
Trump added that the case "is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another President, or Candidate to be!"
He has repeatedly insisted he never knew Carroll and accused her of trying to sell books at his expense and having political motives for bringing the suit. Whatever one thinks of the underlying allegations, the timing and mechanism of the lawsuit, a retroactive statute-of-limitations window, a civil standard of proof, and a venue in deep-blue Manhattan, have given those arguments a long shelf life among conservative voters and legal commentators.
After the Supreme Court declined the case, Carroll's attorneys moved quickly. In a June 30 filing, they argued there was no remaining legal barrier to payment. Breitbart reported that Carroll's legal team stated bluntly:
"This is the end of the line. After four years of litigation across every level of the federal court system, it is time for this case to end."
Trump's attorneys, Josh Halpern and Michael Madaio, filed a motion to pause the payout. They argued that a rehearing petition remained pending before the Supreme Court, and that disbursing the funds would cause "unrecoverable loss", noting that Carroll has publicly stated she intends to donate the defamation award money. Once distributed to third parties, the lawyers argued, the funds "likely cannot be recovered."
That argument carried a practical logic, but it ran into a procedural wall. The Washington Examiner reported that the rehearing petition was not accepted for filing by the Supreme Court, and that such petitions are rarely granted. The justices had previously denied Trump's original petition without a noted dissent after listing it for reconsideration fifteen times.
Judge Kaplan was unmoved. He issued the disbursement order, directing the court clerk to release the funds.
Trump's legal team is not done. The Washington Examiner reported that Trump's strategy now hinges on a presidential immunity argument. His lawyers contend that statements Trump made from the White House in 2019, which were introduced as evidence in the $5 million trial, may qualify as protected official acts under the Supreme Court's 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States.
If that argument gains traction, it could reopen questions about whether key evidence in the original trial was improperly admitted. But the argument faces long odds. The Supreme Court has already passed on the case once, and the 2nd Circuit appeal filed within an hour of Kaplan's ruling will need to clear significant procedural hurdles before any court revisits the merits.
AP News reported that the initial $5 million award has grown with interest since the 2023 verdict, and that Trump is simultaneously fighting the separate $83 million defamation award from the 2024 trial. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, in earlier appellate proceedings, described Carroll as having been "harassed and humiliated, subjected to death threats" as a result of Trump's statements, and said Trump "showed no remorse, continuing his attacks against Carroll during and after two federal trials."
The Carroll case did not arise in a vacuum. It was made possible by a specific legislative act, New York's Adult Survivors Act, that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for civil claims of sexual abuse. The law opened a one-year window for claims that would otherwise have been time-barred. Critics argued at the time that the law's passage, and the speed with which Carroll filed suit, suggested a political motive dressed in legislative clothing.
Trump's characterization of the law as "tailormade" reflects a view widely held on the right: that New York's legal and political institutions have been willing to bend procedural norms when the target is Donald Trump. Whether it is the Carroll civil suits, the Manhattan criminal prosecution, or the state attorney general's civil fraud case, the pattern of New York-based legal actions against a single political figure has no modern precedent.
None of that changes the jury's finding. But it does explain why tens of millions of Americans view the $5.8 million disbursement order not as the final word of justice, but as one more data point in a legal system that appears to operate by different rules depending on who stands in the dock.
When the law itself is rewritten to make a lawsuit possible, and the venue guarantees a sympathetic jury pool, the verdict may be legal. Whether it is legitimate is a question no court can answer.
