Writer E. Jean Carroll leaves the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, September 6, 2024. REUTERS/Adam Gray
Writer E. Jean Carroll again asked the Supreme Court to reject President Donald Trump’s appeal of her $83.3 million defamation verdict, urging the justices not to “bail out this President.”
The justices previously turned down Trump’s appeal in her separate sexual abuse case in June, and Carroll’s lawyers told them in a brief filed Friday to “do the same here.”
A federal jury awarded Carroll that sum in January 2024 over statements Trump made as president in 2019 denying her account of the abuse. Another jury had found in 2023 that he sexually abused her in 1996 and awarded her $5 million. Trump has since abandoned his appeals of the 2023 verdict.
Government lawyers representing Trump argue in his petition that the ruling “wrongly eviscerates Presidential immunity,” which shields presidents from lawsuits over official acts. His petition says it is “the first case in our Nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a President for his conduct in office.”
Trump has insisted he never sexually abused Carroll or even knew her.
Carroll’s lawyers say Trump gave up, or waived, that immunity shield years ago by choosing to fight the case instead. The court should not “bail out this President from the consequences of his repeated litigation choices,” they wrote.
In a 2020 letter to a New York state court, Trump said Carroll was “free to pursue this action when the President is no longer in office” and that he was not “seeking to ‘escape accountability,’” according to the brief.
He then fought the case for nearly three years before raising presidential immunity in December 2022, the brief says.
“No ordinary defendant would be forgiven waiver after waiver—and then waiver of any argument about the standard for waiver—over the course of years of litigation,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote.
Carroll’s lawyers also argue Trump’s attacks on her fell outside a president’s official duties, which the Supreme Court has said immunity covers.
In June 2019, Trump accused Carroll of making up her story to sell a book and said “people should pay dearly for such false accusations,” court records show.
“Wherever the ‘outer perimeter’ of a President’s responsibilities lies … surely what [Trump] inflicted on Ms. Carroll is beyond it,” the brief says.
“For seven years—through five appeals, eight stay motions, and six days of trial—Ms. Carroll has litigated this case in the face of [Trump’s] increasingly vicious accusations and thousands of threats of death and sexual violence from his followers,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote.
The Justice Department filed a separate petition asking the justices to let the United States replace Trump as the defendant, SCOTUSblog reported.
The 1988 law that allows that swap bars defamation claims against the government, so it would end the case, according to Carroll’s brief.
The department had backed the swap in 2020 but dropped it in 2023, writing that the jury’s sexual abuse finding “supports an inference that Mr. Trump was motivated by a ‘personal grievance,’” according to a letter attached to the brief.
After Trump returned to the White House, the department certified in April 2025 that he had acted as part of his job, records attached to the brief show.
In July, Trump asked the justices to reconsider turning down the sexual abuse case or hold it until they acted on this appeal, his rehearing petition shows.
The court denied that request on Aug. 17, its docket shows, leaving that verdict in place.
“While this President may want this Court’s help, the Presidency does not need it,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote.
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