Writer E. Jean Carroll calls for Trump to pay $5.8M after high court appeal fails

NEW YORK (AP) — Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll asked a judge Tuesday to require President Donald Trump to pay her $5 million from a jury verdict that concluded Trump sexually abused her in 1996 and defamed her after she publicly described the attack in 2019.

Carroll’s lawyers said in papers filed in Manhattan federal court that Trump is unjustly trying to delay releasing the money from an escrow fund after the Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal of the 2023 civil verdict.

The amount has grown to nearly $5.8 million with interest and should be required by the court to be disbursed, the lawyers wrote, saying Trump has resumed his defamatory attacks against Carroll as his lawyers consider asking the high court to reconsider its decision.

On Wednesday, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan agreed to let Carroll’s request for the payout to be addressed on an expedited basis, with a response from Trump’s lawyers due by July 7.

The jury reached its verdict in a trial that Trump did not attend after Carroll testified that she was sexually abused by Trump in spring 1996 in the dressing room of a midtown Manhattan luxury department store after a flirtatious and friendly chance encounter between them turned violent.

Carroll, 82, first talked about the attack publicly in 2019 in a memoir while Trump was president. He repeatedly insisted that he never knew Carroll. He also accused her of trying to sell books at his expense and having political motives.

Trump promised on social media Monday to keep fighting what he called a “Weaponization and Lawfare Case” after the Supreme Court’s rejection became known.

Carroll’s court filing said lawyers for Trump contacted her attorneys minutes after Trump published a response to the high court’s action, asking that the payout be delayed while the Supreme Court is asked to reconsider its decision.

But Carroll’s lawyers — Roberta Kaplan, D. Brandon Trice and Maximilian T. Crema — said in their court filing that there was no reason to delay the payment, especially since the Supreme Court expressed no disagreement in deciding not to hear 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,” they wrote.

Lawyers for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump is also appealing $83 million in defamation compensation granted to Carroll by a separate Manhattan jury after a January 2024 trial at which Trump briefly testified.

At that trial, Judge Kaplan, who is unrelated to Carroll’s attorney, required that jury to accept the findings of the previous jury and only determine how much money, if any, Trump owed Carroll for comments he made about her as president.