E Jean Carroll Receives $5.6M Payment From Donald Trump In Sex-Abuse Case: What We Know | Today’s news
E Jean Carroll, the writer who sued US President Donald Trump over allegations of sexual abuse and defamation, has received a $5.6 million jury award following her lawsuit.
The payment, which included a $5 million jury award and interest, was made Monday (local time) from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict, the AP reported, citing court records. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the payment Tuesday.
In a statement, her lawyer wrote: “We are pleased to announce that she has received damages.” Later, Carroll wrote on his Substack that “the eagle has landed.”
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E Jean Carroll vs Donald Trump
A jury ruled that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in a dressing room at a luxury department store in New York in 1996. He later defamed her after she publicly recounted the allegation in her 2019 memoir during his first term as president. The decision led the court to award damages to Carroll.
Trump has consistently denied any sexual encounters with Carroll, saying she “absolutely lied” and was “not my type.” He also said he did not know Carroll, now 82 and a former columnist, dismissed a 1987 photograph of the two with their husbands at a social gathering as irrelevant and claimed her claims were politically motivated and aimed at boosting book sales.
According to reports, Trump did not attend the court hearing where the writer testified that their flirtatious chance encounter at a department store turned violent. She sued the sitting US president after New York changed its laws to allow survivors of sexual abuse a new chance to sue over assaults that took place in the distant past.
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Shortly after the jury ruled against him, Trump deposited the money into an escrow account. After the Supreme Court recently upheld the civil verdict, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan was authorized to release the damages.
Later, Trump’s legal team requested an emergency order to prevent the release of the funds; however, the request was denied. After the Supreme Court rejected his appeal, Trump vowed in a social media post to continue fighting the case.
He wrote: “I will continue to fight this gun case and the law against me, including the ridiculous defamation claim, with all my might and strength.”
The short order imposing the denial placed no restrictions on how the survivor could spend the compensation. In court filings, Carroll’s attorneys said he intended to put the money into a retirement account.
Trump is separately challenging the $83 million defamation award another Manhattan jury gave Carroll after a 2024 trial during which he briefly took the witness stand.
E Jean Carroll faced Justice Department scrutiny
In early May, the now 82-year-old survivor came under the scrutiny of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which opened criminal charges against her after she accused Trump.
The investigation into Carroll is said to have focused on whether she provided false testimony in two civil cases against Trump, CNN reported. One lawsuit accused him of sexually assaulting her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, while another claimed he defamed her in 2019 by repeatedly denying the assault, claiming she was not his type, and claiming she made up the allegation to boost sales of her book.
