{"id":8161,"date":"2026-07-29T23:38:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T23:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/trump-appeals-83-3m-e-jean-carroll-civil-verdict-to-us-supreme-court\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T23:38:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T23:38:19","slug":"trump-appeals-83-3m-e-jean-carroll-civil-verdict-to-us-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/trump-appeals-83-3m-e-jean-carroll-civil-verdict-to-us-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump appeals $83.3m E Jean Carroll civil verdict to US Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<div aria-live=\"polite\" aria-atomic=\"true\">\n<p>Personal lawyers for United States President Donald Trump are appealing to the Supreme Court to reject an $83.3m defamation penalty a jury awarded to writer E Jean Carroll.<\/p>\n<p>Separately, representatives for the Department of Justice have filed a similar petition this week, seeking the same end goal.<\/p>\n<section>\n<h2>Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n<p><span>list of 3 items<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>list 1 of 3<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/6\/29\/us-supreme-court-rebuffs-trumps-appeal-in-e-jean-carroll-case\">US Supreme Court rebuffs Trump\u2019s appeal in E Jean Carroll case<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span>list 2 of 3<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/7\/1\/e-jean-carroll-demands-donald-trump-pay-5-8m-in-damages-from-2019-case\">E Jean Carroll demands Donald Trump pay $5.8m in damages from 2019 case<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span>list 3 of 3<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/7\/8\/trump-ordered-to-pay-e-jean-carroll-5-8m-after-failed-appeal\">Trump ordered to pay E Jean Carroll $5.8m after failed appeal<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n<p>Both have argued that Trump\u2019s statements against Carroll \u2014 who claims the Republican leader sexually assaulted her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store \u2014 fall within the bounds of his office\u2019s immunity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbsent this Court\u2019s intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office,\u201d federal lawyers wrote in their filings.<\/p>\n<p>They pointed to the Westfall Act, which shields federal employees from certain civil lawsuits when an alleged harm is \u201ccommitted within the scope of their employment\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s personal lawyers, meanwhile, suggested that the president\u2019s remarks about Carroll could fall under the precedent set in the 2024 Supreme Court case Trump v United States.<\/p>\n<p>That ruling expanded the concept of presidential immunity.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, presidents enjoyed immunity from prosecution for any actions that fell within their constitutional authority. But after the 2024 case, \u201cpresumptive immunity\u201d was extended to anything that could be considered an \u201cofficial act\u201d of the presidency \u2014 a term that was left largely undefined.<\/p>\n<p>The precedent, however, only applies to criminal prosecution. It does not include civil cases, like Carroll\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Trump\u2019s personal lawyers have sought to widen the 2024 ruling to include civil proceedings. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, however, rejected that approach on September 8 of last year.<\/p>\n<p>In appealing to the Supreme Court, Trump\u2019s legal team argued that his statements about Carroll were voiced as part of his presidential interactions with the public and news reporters. They\u00a0therefore constitute an \u201cofficial act\u201d, according to Trump\u2019s court filings.<\/p>\n<p>His lawyers also accused lower courts of sidestepping the question of presidential immunity, which was not raised at the early stages of the litigation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first case in our nation\u2019s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a president for his conduct in office,\u201d the Trump team said in its filings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYet, in upholding the exorbitant $83.3 million defamation judgment here, the 2nd Circuit never even decided whether presidential immunity applies to President Trump\u2019s allegedly defamatory statements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For years, Trump has fought a pair of defamation lawsuits filed by Carroll. The first was filed in 2019, after Carroll said he damaged her reputation by claiming she lied about the alleged assault for personal gain.<\/p>\n<p>The second came in 2022, after Trump renewed his accusation that Carroll had lied.<\/p>\n<p>In a social media post that year, Trump called her case \u201cphony\u201d, a \u201ccomplete con job\u201d and a \u201ccomplete scam\u201d. He added that he had to defend his reputation from \u201cliars, cheaters, and hacks\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Trump was no longer president at that time, having lost his first re-election bid to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. He has since mounted a successful re-election campaign in the 2024 presidential race.<\/p>\n<p>The second defamation case was resolved first. In 2023, a jury awarded Carroll $5m, finding Trump liable for both sexual abuse and defamation, though not rape, as Carroll alleged.<\/p>\n<p>The 2019 civil trial, meanwhile, reached a verdict in January 2024. In that case, a jury\u00a0awarded $83.3m, much of which came in the form of punitive damages, finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and harming Carroll\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n<p>Carroll, a former columnist for Elle magazine, first made her accusations about Trump\u2019s behaviour public in a 2019 book called What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.<\/p>\n<p>She gave an account of the Republican leader of cornering her in a department store dressing room in 1996, pulling down her tights and raping her. Trump has denied her accusations, saying, \u201cThis woman is not my type.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the years since the two jury decisions, Carroll\u2019s lawyers have accused the Trump side of attempting to avoid paying the verdicts.<\/p>\n<p>In June, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/6\/29\/us-supreme-court-rebuffs-trumps-appeal-in-e-jean-carroll-case\">Supreme Court declined<\/a> to hear Trump\u2019s appeal against the initial $5m jury award \u2014 which had grown due to accrued interest to nearly $5.8m. A federal judge subsequently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/7\/8\/trump-ordered-to-pay-e-jean-carroll-5-8m-after-failed-appeal\">ordered the payment<\/a> to be disbursed this month.<\/p>\n<p>It is unclear whether the Supreme Court will take up Trump\u2019s appeal of the $83.3m defamation verdict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Personal lawyers for United States President Donald Trump are appealing to the Supreme Court to reject an $83.3m defamation penalty a jury awarded to writer E Jean Carroll. Separately, representatives for the Department of Justice have filed a similar petition this week, seeking the same end goal. Recommended Stories list of 3 items list 1 &#8230; <a title=\"Trump appeals $83.3m E Jean Carroll civil verdict to US Supreme Court\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/trump-appeals-83-3m-e-jean-carroll-civil-verdict-to-us-supreme-court\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Trump appeals $83.3m E Jean Carroll civil verdict to US Supreme Court\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}