Trump asks Supreme Court to overturn Jean Carroll $83M award
President Donald Trump on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to overturn E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 million defamation verdict, arguing presidential immunity covers statements he made in office in 2019. The appeal, not yet docketed, also seeks to substitute the United States as defendant. Carroll’s attorneys declined to comment.
Key Takeaways
- Trump petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn Jean Carroll’s $83.3 million defamation judgment from statements made while he was president in 2019.
- His lawyers lean on the court’s 2024 presidential-immunity ruling and say the Second Circuit never decided whether immunity applies.
- Trump also wants the United States substituted as the defendant under arguments tied to the Westfall Act.
- The justices are out of session for summer and are not expected to consider the appeal until the fall; a decision, if the court takes the case, would likely come next June.
- Weeks earlier, the Supreme Court declined to hear Trump’s challenge to a separate $5 million civil verdict for Carroll.
What did Trump ask the Supreme Court to do?
According to CNN, Trump on Tuesday urged the justices to step back into his long-running fight with magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. He is appealing an $83.3 million jury verdict for defamation on the claim that, as president, he is immune from the litigation.
Trump’s attorneys told the high court this is “the first case in our nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a president for his conduct in office.” They argued that, in upholding the award, the Second Circuit “never even decided whether presidential immunity applies.”
Trump warned that an appeals court decision favoring Carroll would “cause significant damage, not only to this president and future presidents” but also the nation. His filing also asks the court to review whether the United States government, not the president, should be the defendant.
Why does Jean Carroll’s $83 million case matter now?
The dispute centers on statements Trump made against Carroll in 2019, while he was president. A jury found those remarks defamatory and ordered him to pay about $83 million in damages. Carroll has said Trump denied the assault, said she wasn’t his type, and claimed she invented the allegation to boost book sales.
A federal appeals court panel affirmed the award as “reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts” and rejected several of Trump’s challenges. It found he had previously waived a presidential-immunity claim and that the Supreme Court’s 2024 immunity decision did not change that view. The full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to revisit the ruling in late April.
U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin wrote that presidential immunity “was not raised for the first three years of this case” and resisted substituting the United States as defendant so late after trial. For readers following related legal drama, see more coverage in our True Crime & Unsolved Mysteries hub.
What happens next in the Jean Carroll appeal?
Because the Supreme Court is not in session over the summer, it will not consider Trump’s appeal until the fall. If the justices agree to hear the case, a decision would not likely come until next June, CNN reported.
The new filing comes weeks after the court declined a separate Trump bid to unwind a $5 million civil verdict finding he sexually abused and defamed Carroll in connection with an alleged 1990s encounter at Bergdorf Goodman. Trump has denied wrongdoing in both cases. The Justice Department has signaled it may seek to intervene under the Westfall Act, which can shield federal employees for official-duty acts and, in this context, could effectively end Carroll’s defamation recovery if substitution succeeds.