President Donald Trump is trying to force E Jean Carroll to pay back the $5.6 million he was ordered to pay the former Elle magazine writer after a federal jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
That money was disbursed to Carroll from a court-controlled escrow account on July 9.
But the president’s legal team is seeking an emergency injunction that would order Carroll to return the payment to the account in the hopes that the Supreme Court will grant him a legal Hail Mary and reverse the judgment, sending the money back to him.
“But rather than accept the reality that he had lost, [Trump] has engaged in a series of maneuvers trying desperately to forestall payment,” lawyers for Carroll wrote in legal filings Monday night.
That payment to Carroll — more than three years after the jury’s verdict — “should have been the end of this case,” her lawyers said. “But Defendant now demands yet another unprecedented remedy. … The judgment here is final, the money has already been disbursed, and Carroll is entitled to keep it.”
Trump’s request also comes to the court “with very unclean hands” after repeating the same defamatory attacks against Carroll that lost him his case in the first place, her lawyers wrote.
Each attack has “a domino effect,” and subjects Carroll to “ongoing and prolific harassment as a result of these statements, including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury,” they said.
A seven-year legal battle follows the first of two defamation lawsuits from Carroll, who accused Trump of assaulting her inside a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.
A federal jury unanimously awarded her $5 million after finding him liable for sexual abuse and then defaming her with his denials. A separate jury in 2024 ordered the president to pay Carroll another $83 million in additional defamation damages.
On July 8, New York District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered a court-monitored escrow account to begin payments from the initial verdict after the Supreme Court rejected the president’s appeal.
She then received $5,625,005.48.
Trump has repeatedly denied Carroll’s claims, which he has labeled a “hoax” and “con job” to boost sales for her memoir. After the Supreme Court rejected his petition last month, he called the case “fake” and repeated his claim that he “never met” Carroll — statements at the center of defamation lawsuits against him.
He plans to “continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength,” he wrote on Truth Social June 30.
“This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another President, or Candidate to be!” he added.
Trump’s lawyers said Carroll should wait until the Supreme Court “fully” decides whether to re-hear the president’s attempt to overturn the verdict, otherwise he faces an “unrecoverable loss” of millions of dollars that will cause him "irreparable harm.”
Earlier this month, her lawyers argued Trump is merely trying to “buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying” Carroll.
Carroll’s lawyers now say he has run out of options.
“Defendant has lost before a jury, the district court, a unanimous Second Circuit panel, the full Second Circuit, en banc, and the Supreme Court of the United States. He agreed — in a signed stipulation — that Carroll could collect her judgment once his certiorari petition had been denied. That happened,” they wrote Monday. “Carroll should not have to wait any longer.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s Department of Justice has joined his Supreme Court fight to prevent Carroll from receiving another $83 million from the president.
Trump took the extraordinary step of trying to replace himself as a defendant with the U.S. government as he fights for “immunity” from having to pay her.
A brief court filing signed by top Justice Department officials earlier this year claims there is “good cause” to pause the case and let the administration argue Trump’s immunity claims on his behalf.
The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to hear that case.
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