The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump's request to reconsider his appeal of a $5 million verdict awarded to E. Jean Carroll after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the former magazine columnist.
The justices declined to hear Trump's request for a second time, following their decision in June to reject his initial appeal of the 2023 jury verdict. Trump's lawyers had argued that the trial was unfair.
The case stemmed from Carroll's allegations that Trump raped her in the 1990s in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store. Trump denied the allegations and said Carroll had lied about them.
The jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her, but did not find that he had raped her.
The $5 million verdict concerned statements Trump made in 2022, when he described Carroll's allegations as a "hoax" and a "con job" in a social media post.
Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, first publicly accused Trump of rape in 2019, when she published an excerpt from her memoir alleging that he had assaulted her around 1996 at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.
Following the Supreme Court's decision in June, Carroll received nearly $5.63 million from Trump, representing the original civil verdict plus interest.
The Supreme Court is separately considering Trump's appeal of an $83.3 million jury verdict for defaming Carroll in 2019, when he denied her allegations and accused her of lying.
Trump's lawyers argue in that case that presidential immunity protects him from Carroll's claims and that lower courts wrongly determined he had forfeited that defense.
In seeking reconsideration of the $5 million case, Trump's lawyers argued that the presidential immunity issue in the separate case could also affect the earlier verdict.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that former presidents have full immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken within their core constitutional powers. The Carroll cases are civil lawsuits.
