U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the $5 million damages verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s case has once again failed after the Supreme Court’s decision.
In a petition filed with the court, Trump’s lawyers described Carroll’s allegations as “a politically motivated hoax.” They argued that Carroll’s legal team had also distorted the federal rules of evidence to support their client’s “incredible, baseless allegations.”
Carroll’s account of the incident
Carroll, a former television host, alleged in two accounts given before a jury in New York that Trump sexually assaulted her in the spring of 1996 in a dressing room at a luxury department store across from Trump Tower.
Carroll first made the allegation public in her memoir, published in 2019. Trump claimed that Carroll had fabricated the incident to boost sales of her book and said he had never met her. After Trump said Carroll was “not my type,” Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit.
The jury’s 2023 verdict
A separate jury in the 2023 case found that Trump had sexually abused Carroll during the encounter at the store. The jury also ruled that Trump had defamed Carroll through statements he made after the end of his first term in office.
The jury found that Carroll was entitled to $5 million in damages. Trump’s application to overturn that verdict was later rejected again by the Supreme Court.