Appeals court won't rehear Trump's challenge to E. Jean Carroll verdict
A federal appeals court in New York on Wednesday rejected President Donald Trump's request to rehear his challenges to the writer E. Jean Carroll's successful defamation claims.
A jury awarded Carroll $83 million in damages in 2024 after she successfully argued that Trump defamed her with comments he made disputing her claim he sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s.
The jury found that, as a result of the comments, Carroll was harassed and humiliated, subjected to death threats, and feared for her physical safety for years.
Trump, who has denied all wrongdoing, tried unsuccessfully to substitute the United States as a defendant and to raise a claim of presidential immunity. In its decision Wednesday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said both arguments were raised too late.
"The fact of the matter is that no other defendant would be permitted to move to substitute the United States in his place, fifteen months after trial and the entry of judgment against him," Judge Denny Chin wrote. "The Court appropriately declined to convene en banc to revisit this issue."
A separate jury in an earlier trial awarded Carroll $5 million in damages after holding Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse. The 2nd Circuit previously rejected each of Trump's appellate efforts in that case.
In response to Wednesday's ruling, Carroll's attorney said in a statement, "We are pleased that the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has denied President Trump's petition for an en banc hearing in connection with the verdict from the second jury trial."
"E. Jean Carroll is eager for this case, originally filed in 2019, to be over so that she can finally obtain justice," the attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said.
