President Donald Trump’s legal team is still refusing to pay out the $5 million damages verdict to E. Jean Carroll, only now they have a strange new excuse, CNBC reported Wednesday morning.
A jury found the president liable for sexual abuse and defamation in 2023 — and Trump has been fighting to overturn it ever since.
Trump’s attorneys made two arguments, according to the report.
First, as summarized by CNBC, “Money cannot be released to Carroll under an agreement unless and until the Supreme Court rejects the president’s new, long-shot bid for reconsideration of his petition that the high court take his appeal of that verdict.”
This comes despite the fact that the Supreme Court already smacked aside Trump’s most recent challenge to the verdict.
Attorneys then made another surprising excuse, according to CNBC.
“Trump’s attorneys also argued that another reason Carroll should not get any money yet is that the agreement includes language requiring Trump to be repaid the money he deposited if the verdict is reversed,” said the report.
Specifically, the attorneys noted that Carroll “has repeatedly stated that she intends to give away all funds that she collects from him, and once those funds are distributed to third parties, they likely cannot be recovered.”