A federal appeals court on Friday turned away an attempt by President Donald Trump to have a lower court’s ruling in his $5 million sexual abuse case involving former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll overturned.
The decision, first reported on the X platform by Politico’s Kyle Cheney, stemmed from a divided Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in which all 11 judges were involved en banc. The ruling left intact a three-judge decision on Dec. 30 to enforce the jury award.
Carroll, now 81, alleged that Trump assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan around 1996, and later defamed her in an October 2022 Truth Social post by calling her accusation a hoax.
In May 2023, a jury found that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her by making false statements. However, the jury did not conclude that Trump had raped her, as she originally claimed.
In requesting reconsideration, Trump argued that the trial judge made a mistake by allowing jurors to view the 2005 Access Hollywood video, in which he boasted about his sexual behavior, along with what he described as a “pile-on” of prejudicial evidence involving allegations from two other women.
“Two of the Trump appointees, Judges Steven Menashi and Michael Park, on the bench dissent from the en banc decision, saying the judge shouldn’t have admitted ‘propensity’ evidence like the Access Hollywood tape,” Cheney reported on X.
One accuser, businesswoman Jessica Leeds, claimed Trump groped her on a plane in the late 1970s. The other, former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, alleged he forcibly kissed her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005. Trump has denied both allegations.
Trump, who turns 79 on Saturday, is also appealing an $83.3 million jury verdict issued in January 2024, which found he defamed Carroll and harmed her reputation in June 2019 when he first denied her allegation about the incident at Bergdorf Goodman.
In that appeal, Trump contends that the U.S. Supreme Court’s July decision granting him broad criminal immunity also shields him from civil liability in Carroll’s case.
In his 2019 and 2022 statements denying Carroll’s accusations, Trump claimed she was “not my type” and alleged she fabricated the story to promote her memoir.
Trump could also face a third lawsuit from Carroll over a post he made to his Truth Social account during the Memorial Day observance a year ago.
“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for ‘DEFAMATION,’” Trump wrote.
“She didn’t know when the so-called event took place – sometime in the 1990’s – never filed a police report, didn’t have to produce the ‘dress’ that she threatened me with (it showed negative!), & sung my praises in the first half of her CNN Interview with Alison Cooper, but changed her tune in the second half – Gee, I wonder why (UNDER APPEAL!)? The Rape charge was dropped by a jury! Or Arthur Engoron, the N.Y. State Wacko Judge who fined me almost 500 Million Dollars (UNDER APPEAL) for DOING NOTHING WRONG, used a Statute that has never been used before, gave me NO JURY, Mar-a-Lago at $18,000,000 – Now for Merchan!” he added.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed to Newsweek that her client was considering yet another lawsuit.
“We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table. And that remains true today. All options are on the table,” Kaplan said in a statement at the time.
