Federal Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Bid to Overturn $5 Million Verdict in E. Jean Carroll Case
A federal appeals court on Friday rejected former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn a $5 million jury verdict in a civil case brought by former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexual abuse and defamation.
The ruling, first reported by Politico’s Kyle Cheney on X, came from the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which considered the matter en banc with all 11 judges participating. The decision leaves intact a previous ruling by a three-judge panel on December 30, which upheld the jury’s findings.
Carroll, now 81, alleged that Trump assaulted her in a dressing room at Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. She also sued him for defamation over an October 2022 post on Truth Social in which Trump called her accusations a hoax.
In May 2023, a jury concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll and defamed her—but did not find him liable for rape, as she had originally claimed.
Trump’s legal team sought reconsideration, arguing the trial judge erred in allowing jurors to view the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump made lewd comments about women, along with testimony from two other women who accused him of misconduct. Trump’s attorneys characterized this as an unfair “pile-on” of prejudicial evidence.
Two Trump-appointed judges, Steven Menashi and Michael Park, dissented from the majority decision, asserting that the inclusion of such “propensity” evidence—especially the Access Hollywood footage—was improper.
One of the additional accusers, businesswoman Jessica Leeds, said Trump groped her on a flight in the late 1970s. The second, former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, claimed he forcibly kissed her at Mar-a-Lago in 2005. Trump has denied both allegations.
Separately, Trump is appealing an $83.3 million verdict from January 2024, which found him liable for defaming Carroll in June 2019 after initially denying her claims. In that appeal, Trump argues the U.S. Supreme Court’s July ruling granting presidents broad criminal immunity also extends to civil cases—potentially shielding him from liability.
In both his 2019 and 2022 statements, Trump asserted Carroll was “not my type” and claimed she fabricated the story to sell her memoir.
Carroll may also pursue a third defamation suit related to a May 2024 post Trump made on Truth Social during Memorial Day. In the message, he lashed out at Carroll, the federal judge who oversaw the trials, and the verdicts against him.
“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country…” Trump wrote, going on to refer to Carroll as someone he “never met before,” criticized the lack of a police report or physical evidence, and claimed the jury had “dropped the rape charge.” He also took aim at other legal cases he faces, including the civil fraud judgment in New York.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed to Newsweek that further legal action remains on the table.
“We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table. And that remains true today,” Kaplan said in a statement.