NEW YORK (AP) — Writer E. Jean Carroll has received more than $5.6 million from President Donald Trump, fulfilling a jury’s award in her sexual abuse and defamation case against him, according to court records and her legal team.
The funds — representing the original $5 million jury verdict plus accumulated interest — were transferred Monday from an escrow account where they had been held since the 2023 jury ruling. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the transaction took place on Tuesday.
“We are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment,” Kaplan said in a prepared statement.
Trump had placed the money into an escrow account shortly after the jury ruled against him. The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to overturn the civil verdict, allowing Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to authorize the release of the funds.
Attorneys representing Trump had sought an emergency court order to block the transfer, but that request was denied. The one-sentence ruling denying the request placed no restrictions on how Carroll may use the money. Her legal team indicated in court filings that she intends to place the funds into a retirement account.
Trump’s legal team has since filed an additional appeal aimed at stopping or reversing the payment.
The jury determined that Trump assaulted Carroll in 1996 inside the dressing room of a luxury New York department store, and later defamed her after she publicly described the incident in a memoir published in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office.
Trump denied any sexual encounter with Carroll, now 82, a former advice columnist. In a 2019 interview, Trump claimed she was “totally lying” and “not my type.” He also stated he did not know her, dismissed a 1987 photograph showing the two of them alongside their then-spouses at a social gathering, and accused her of having political motivations and using him to boost book sales.
Trump did not appear at the trial, during which Carroll testified that a chance, friendly encounter at the department store turned into a violent attack.
Carroll brought the lawsuit after New York enacted legislation giving sexual abuse survivors an extended window to file civil claims for incidents that occurred in the past.
In a separate legal matter, Trump is also appealing an $83 million defamation judgment awarded to Carroll by a different Manhattan jury following a 2024 trial at which Trump briefly took the stand.
The Associated Press generally does not identify individuals who allege they have been sexually abused. Carroll has consented to being named publicly.
