Supreme Court filings confirm President Trump has paid roughly $5.62 million to writer E. Jean Carroll, but the far larger $83.3 million defamation award remains unresolved and headed back toward the justices.
The filings, made public this week, show that Carroll received the full amount of the first civil judgment plus accrued interest after the Supreme Court on June 29 declined without comment or recorded dissent to hear Trump's appeal. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan then ordered the release of escrowed funds. Trump's attorneys made emergency efforts to delay the payout, but those efforts failed, and the judgment was satisfied, Just the News reported.
The $5.62 million traces back to a 2023 jury verdict that found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation related to allegations by Carroll, a longtime advice columnist. Jurors awarded her $2 million on the sexual abuse claim and $3 million for defamation. They rejected Carroll's rape claim under New York's legal definition in effect at the time. Interest pushed the total past the original $5 million.
That case, though, is the smaller half of Trump's legal exposure to Carroll. The second, and vastly more expensive, front is still very much alive.
In January 2024, a second jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million after concluding Trump continued to defame her through statements he made even after the first verdict. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed that judgment earlier this year. Trump has posted a bond securing the award while his appeal proceeds, and enforcement of the judgment has been stayed in the meantime.
Trump's legal team is expected to petition the Supreme Court for review of the $83.3 million award. His attorneys have already signaled the arguments they plan to raise: that the case presents presidential immunity questions under the Court's 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, and that statements Trump made while serving as president should be treated as official conduct under the Westfall Act, a federal law that can shield government employees from personal liability for actions taken in the course of their duties.
After the justices declined to hear the first case, Trump's lawyers filed a petition for rehearing, arguing the Court should reconsider because the forthcoming petition on the larger judgment may raise those immunity issues. The outcome of that rehearing request has not been disclosed.
Whether the Supreme Court will be more receptive to the $83.3 million appeal remains an open question. Some legal observers cited in reporting on the case have suggested the immunity arguments could present a more substantial basis for review. Others read the Court's refusal to take up the first case, without comment or dissent, as a signal of reluctance to intervene.
Trump vowed to keep fighting after the Supreme Court let the first verdict stand, and his team has shown no signs of backing down on the larger judgment.
Carroll first publicly accused Trump in 2019, alleging he sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan during the mid-1990s. The accusation appeared in an excerpt from her memoir published by New York Magazine. Trump denied the claim, calling Carroll a "liar" and describing the allegations as a "hoax" and politically motivated.
Carroll filed her first lawsuit that same year, alleging Trump defamed her by denying the assault and accusing her of fabricating the story. She filed a second suit in 2022 under New York's Adult Survivors Act, a state law that temporarily reopened the window for civil claims related to sexual offenses, adding a battery claim based on the alleged assault along with additional defamation claims.
At the 2023 trial, the jury heard testimony from two other women who accused Trump of similar misconduct, and prosecutors introduced a 2005 recording, the so-called Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump described grabbing women without their consent. Trump's attorneys argued on appeal that the trial court improperly admitted both the testimony from other accusers and the recording. The Second Circuit disagreed and affirmed the verdict.
After Carroll's lawyers moved to collect following the Supreme Court's June 29 denial, Trump petitioned for rehearing, but the funds were released over his attorneys' objections.
Trump has consistently characterized both Carroll lawsuits as part of a broader pattern of politically driven legal attacks. On Truth Social and in interviews, he has labeled the cases "hoaxes" and "con jobs," described the judicial process as election interference and "weaponization" of the justice system, and framed his continued appeals as resistance against what he calls "Democrat-funded lawfare."
A spokesperson for Trump echoed that posture after the Supreme Court's decision, declaring that "the American People stand with President Trump" in demanding an end to such cases.
The framing fits a pattern familiar to anyone who has followed Trump's broader clashes with the judiciary. Federal courts have served as a persistent friction point for the administration, from judges blocking executive actions to disputes over the scope of presidential authority that have reached the Supreme Court itself.
Trump petitioned the Supreme Court for review of the first Carroll judgment in November 2025. The justices considered it at their June 25, 2026 conference and denied it four days later. No justice publicly dissented, a fact that cuts in different directions depending on whom you ask. For Trump's critics, the silence signals that even a conservative-majority Court saw no merit in the appeal. For his defenders, it says nothing about the merits of the larger $83.3 million case, which raises distinct legal questions about presidential speech and immunity.
The Supreme Court's recent willingness to take on politically charged cases suggests the justices are not reflexively avoiding controversy. Whether they see the Carroll defamation judgment as the right vehicle remains to be seen.
For now, the concrete outcome is straightforward: Carroll has her $5.62 million. The first case is closed. Trump's emergency maneuvers to delay payment failed, and Judge Kaplan's order releasing the escrowed funds stands.
But the $83.3 million judgment, more than fourteen times the size of the first, remains under appellate review. Trump has posted bond, enforcement is stayed, and his legal team is preparing to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in. The immunity arguments they plan to raise are untested in this context, and the Court's willingness to engage with them is unknown.
As observers have noted, the judiciary's role as a check on presidential power is itself a contested question in the current political moment. The Carroll litigation sits squarely at that intersection, a civil case with enormous financial stakes, rooted in decades-old allegations, and now tangled with live constitutional questions about what a president can say and when he can be held personally liable for saying it.
Five million dollars is already out the door. Whether eighty-three million follows depends on how far the courts are willing to go, and whether the Supreme Court decides this fight is worth having.