Trump opposes E. Jean Carroll getting damages award

Attorneys for President Donald Trump in a late Tuesday night court filing urged a New York federal judge not to disburse nearly $5.8 million to E. Jean Carroll to satisfy a May 2023 civil verdict holding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer.

Trump’s lawyers said that money cannot be released to Carroll under an agreement unless and until the Supreme Court rejects the president’s new, long-shot bid for reconsideration of his petition that the high court take his appeal of that verdict.

The Supreme Court very rarely grants such requests after having denied an initial petition to take an appeal, as it did on June 29 in saying it would not hear Trump’s appeal.

Trump’s lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court for a rehearing of its denial, according to the new filing, which included a copy of that request, dated Monday.

“Collection cannot begin while proceedings remain pending before the Supreme Court, which is currently the case,” Trump’s lawyers Josh Halpern and Michael Madaio said in the filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

“Paragraph 8 [of the agreement] does not permit collection while the rehearing petition remains unresolved,” the attorneys wrote, referring to a stipulation by the parties to hold $5.5 million deposited by Trump with that court as security as he appealed the $5 million verdict in Carroll’s favor.

With accrued interest, Carroll’s lawyers say she is owed almost $5.8 million. Trump listed the verdict as a liability in his 2025 financial disclosure report released last month.

Trump’s attorneys also argued that another reason Carroll should not get any money yet is that the agreement includes language requiring Trump to be repaid the money he deposited if the verdict is reversed.

Carroll “has repeatedly stated that she intends to give away all funds that she collects from him, and once those funds are distributed to third parties, they likely cannot be recovered,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.

Trump’s related new petition to the Supreme Court says a rehearing is warranted because Trump will soon ask the high court to hear arguments on whether he has immunity from another lawsuit by Carroll over statements he made about her while president.

Trump also lost that case in Manhattan federal court, where a jury in January 2024 ordered him to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages for defaming her when he strongly denied her 2019 allegation of being raped by him in a New York department store in the mid-1990s.

And if he has immunity in that case, the lawyers said it could undercut the verdict in the other case that led…