E Jean Carroll, the writer who sued US President over claims of sexual abuse and defamation, has received $5.6 million that a jury awarded her following her lawsuit.
The payment, which included a $5 million jury award and interest, was made on Monday (local time) from an account where it had been held in since the 2023 verdict, AP reported, citing court records. The payment was confirmed on Tuesday by Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.
In a statement, her lawyer wrote, “We are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment.” Later, Carroll wrote on her Substack that “the eagle has landed.”
E Jean Carroll vs Donald Trump
A jury determined that Trump 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 presidential term. The ruling led the court to award Carroll compensation.
Trump has consistently denied any sexual encounter with , maintaining that she was “totally lying” and “not my type”. He also said he did not know Carroll, who is now 82 and a former advice columnist, dismissed a 1987 photograph showing the two with their respective spouses at a social gathering as insignificant, and alleged that her claims were politically motivated and intended to boost book sales.
According to reports, Trump didn’t attend the trial, where the writer testified that their flirtatious chance encounter at the department store turned violent. She sued the incumbent after New York changed its laws to allow sexual abuse survivors a fresh chance to sue over attacks that occurred in the distant past.
Shortly after the jury ruled against him, Trump deposited the money in an escrow account. After the recently let the civil verdict stand, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan was cleared to release the compensation.
Later, Trump’s legal team sought an emergency order to prevent the funds from being released; however, the request was rejected. After the Supreme Court rejected his appeal, Trump vowed in a social media post to continue to fight the case.
He wrote, “I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength.”
The brief order imposing the denial did not impose any restrictions on how the survivor could spend the compensation. In court filings, Carroll’s attorneys said she intends to deposit the money into a retirement account.
Trump is separately challenging an $83 million award that a different Manhattan jury granted to Carroll following a 2024 trial, during which he briefly took the witness stand.
E Jean Carroll faced DOJ scrutiny
Earlier in May, the now-82-year-old survivor came under the scrutiny of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which launched a criminal investigation against her after she accused Trump.
The investigation into Carroll was said to centre 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 the other alleged he defamed her in 2019 by repeatedly denying the assault, saying she was not his type, and claiming she fabricated the allegation to increase sales of her book.
(with agency inputs)
