President Trump has paid the writer E. Jean Carroll $5.6 million he owed her after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s and then defaming her, federal court records show.
The money, which had been held in escrow while Mr. Trump appealed the jury’s 2023 award, was disbursed to Ms. Carroll last week, according to a note added on Tuesday to the online court docket in the case.
The payment came after the U.S. Supreme Court declined the president’s latest attempt to appeal the verdict, which prompted the judge overseeing the case to order that the money be released to Ms. Carroll.
Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that she and her client were “pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.”
The White House press office referred a request for comment to Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers. Aaron Harison, a spokesman for the legal team representing Mr. Trump in the matter, said in a statement that “the American people stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll hoaxes.”
The judgment against Mr. Trump stemmed from a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan in which Ms. Carroll, 82, accused the president of sexual abuse and of defaming her by calling the accusation “a Hoax and a lie” on social media.
In a unanimous verdict, the jury in the case awarded her $5 million. With interest, the sum had grown to $5.625 million as of last week.
Mr. Trump, who has consistently denied knowing Ms. Carroll much less abusing her, placed the money in a court-supervised account while he pursued appeals. That effort ended last month when the Supreme Court, without citing a reason and with no public dissent, denied his request that it review the matter.
Mr. Trump, 80, continued to rail against Ms. Carroll after the Supreme Court’s decision, writing on Truth Social that her suit was “a Fake Case.”
After the court declined to consider the case, Ms. Carroll immediately asked the federal judge overseeing it to order the president to pay what he owed. She asserted that Mr. Trump had “consistently sought to obstruct and delay payment” of the jury’s award.
In a ruling issued on July 8, the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, agreed.
“In the last analysis, defendant has been stalling this case for years,” Judge Kaplan wrote. He cited the jury’s verdict, that it had been upheld on appeal and that the Supreme Court had decided not to review the matter. It was time, he said, for Mr. Trump to “pay the judgment.”
Another case involving Ms. Carroll’s allegations against the president remains unresolved and could also end up at the Supreme Court.
In 2024, a separate federal jury in Manhattan ordered Mr. Trump to pay her $83.3 million after concluding that he had defamed her in 2019. His lawyers have said he may ask the justices to review the verdict.
Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.