NEW YORK — Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll went before a Manhattan federal court Tuesday, asking a judge to force President Donald Trump to hand over $5 million from a civil jury verdict that determined Trump sexually abused her in the 1990s and later defamed her when she came forward publicly in 2019.
Carroll’s legal team submitted court documents stating that Trump has been improperly dragging his feet on releasing the money, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to take up his appeal of the 2023 civil jury verdict.
With accumulated interest, the total amount owed has grown to nearly $5.8 million, and Carroll’s attorneys are urging the court to order the payment released without further delay. They noted that Trump’s legal team had already begun exploring whether to ask the high court to reconsider its decision — a move Carroll’s side views as yet another stalling tactic.
The original jury reached its verdict following a trial that Trump did not attend. Carroll testified that Trump sexually assaulted her in the spring of 1996 inside the dressing room of a high-end department store in midtown Manhattan, after what began as a casual and friendly chance meeting turned violent.
Carroll, 82, first spoke publicly about the incident in 2019 while Trump was serving as president. Trump repeatedly denied ever knowing Carroll and accused her of fabricating the story to sell books and advance a political agenda.
Following the Supreme Court’s rejection of his appeal, Trump took to social media Monday to vow he would continue fighting what he described as a “Weaponization and Lawfare Case.”
According to Carroll’s legal team, Trump’s attorneys reached out to them within minutes of Trump’s social media post, requesting that the payment be postponed while a petition for reconsideration was being considered.
Carroll’s attorneys — Roberta Kaplan, D. Brandon Trice, and Maximilian T. Crema — pushed back firmly in their court filing, arguing there was no valid reason to hold up the payment, especially given that the Supreme Court showed no division in its decision to pass on the case.
“To date, Carroll has agreed to each of Defendant’s many requests to delay the payment he owes her. Given the extraordinary lengths he has taken to avoid such payments and that each of those efforts has been denied in full, that cooperation ends today. It is time for him to pay Carroll,” the attorneys wrote.
Trump’s legal representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Separately, Trump is also appealing an $83 million defamation award granted to Carroll by a different Manhattan jury following a January 2024 trial, during which Trump briefly took the stand. In that proceeding, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan — who has no relation to Carroll’s attorney — instructed the jury to accept the findings of the first jury and focus solely on determining the dollar amount Trump owed Carroll for statements he made about her while serving as president.
