Trump forks over $5.6M to E. Jean Carroll in sex-assault case as much heftier payout looms
President Trump has paid accuser E.Jean Carroll $5.625 million after a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting her in a Big Apple department store and later defaming her, court records revealed Tuesday.The payout comes after the US Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s legal protests over it — a decision that could also spell bad news for his attempts to block a much heftier $83.3 million related judgment against him involving Carroll.The $5.6 million penalty had been awarded to the former advice columnist by a jury in May 2023 but held for years in a trust account during Trump’s failed bids to appeal it.
The dough was finally recently sent to Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, records show.“Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E.Jean Carroll,” Kaplan said in a statement Tuesday.
“Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.”Carroll, now 82, testified that Trump, now 80, forcibly penetrated her with his fingers after cornering her in a lingerie department dressing room inside Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue in 1996.Trump has denied that the encounter happened, but New York jurors at the civil trial in Manhattan federal court found that there was a preponderance of the evidence — in other words, that it was more likely than not — that he sexually assaulted her.The jury found him liable of sexual abuse but cleared him of a separate rape charge after being told that digital assaults did not legally constitute rape in New York by law at the time.
New York updated its rape law to include such attacks in September 2024.Jurors also found that Trump defamed Carroll after the attack by claiming she “wasn’t his type” and that she fabricated her account to boost book sales.The $5.625 million award now sets the stage for the far larger penalty Carroll will get unless Trump convinces the Supre...