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President Trump’s attorneys have mounted a last-minute bid to pause the payment of a more than $5 million judgment owed to writer E. Jean Carroll over two years after a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
Trump’s attorneys urged District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Tuesday to deny Caroll’s motion to disburse the nearly $5.8 million award from escrow while the president’s “timely petition for rehearing remains pending before the Supreme Court.”
“Collection cannot begin while proceedings remain pending before the Supreme Court, which is currently the case,” lawyers Josh Halpern and Michael Madaio wrote in Manhattan court filings.
The high court declined on June 29 to hear Trump’s appeal, leaving intact the 2023 jury verdict that stemmed from Carroll’s first successful lawsuit against Trump in which she claimed he assaulted her in a luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
The jury also found that Trump defamed the advice columnist when she first publicly came forward with the accusations during his first term. Trump has maintained Carroll fabricated her story and that he and Carroll have never met.
“Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to ‘review’ a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met (Decades old celebrity photo line, standing with her husband, does not count!),” Trump wrote on Truth Social in late June. “I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength.”
And while Trump’s lawyers now claim a petition for rehearing is “pending” before the justices again, records show it was not accepted for filing this week.
They also argued that Trump would face “unrecoverable loss” if the money is released and then overturned on appeal, citing Carroll’s stated intention to donate money she collects from her civil defamation suits.
“Plaintiff 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,” Halpern and Madaio wrote.
Carroll’s attorneys have sought to expedite the release schedule, arguing that the president is trying to unjustly delay the payment despite the Supreme Court’s appeal rejection.
“This is the end of the line,” they wrote in a June 30 filing. “After four years of litigation across every level of the federal court system, it is time for this case to end.”
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