Supreme Court Rejects Trump Appeal of Carroll Sex-Abuse Verdict

The US Supreme Court left intact a jury’s finding that Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll, putting her in line to collect a $5 million award from the president.

The justices without comment or noted dissent refused to consider Trump’s appeal. He argued that jurors shouldn’t have been allowed to hear testimony about two prior alleged sexual assaults or listen to the Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted in vulgar terms that he could grab women by their genitalia.

The verdict is one of two Carroll won against Trump, who has indicated he also will seek Supreme Court review of an $83.3 million award in a separate defamation suit. The Justice Department says it will join that effort, which is likely to raise distinct legal issues because that case centers on comments Trump made while he was president.

In the lawsuit that produced the $5 million verdict, Carroll accused Trump of pinning her against a wall and putting his fingers inside her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in 1996. Carroll also said Trump defamed her when he posted on social media in 2022 that her allegations were a “complete con job,” a “Hoax” and a “Scam.” In that same post, Trump said that Carroll “is not my type!”

The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict, saying the testimony of the other alleged victims and the Access Hollywood recording helped establish a pattern of conduct by Trump.

The disputed evidence helped to “establish a repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct consistent with what Ms. Carroll alleged,” the appeals court said. “In each of the three encounters, Mr. Trump engaged in an ordinary conversation with a woman he barely knew, then abruptly lunged at her in a semi-public place and proceeded to kiss and forcefully touch her without her consent.”

Trump’s attorneys sought to portray the case as having significance far beyond the specific legal issues.

“It is deeply damaging to the fabric of our republic for President Trump, in the midst of a historic presidency, to have to take his focus away from his singular and unique duties as chief executive to continue fighting against decades-old, false allegations and the myriad wrongs throughout this baseless case,” his lawyers argued.

Carroll urged the Supreme Court not to hear the case, saying the evidentiary issues presented by the appeal weren’t worthy of high court review. She said the 2nd Circuit “correctly held that the district court acted within its discretion in admitting the challenged evidence.”

Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, went public with her allegations in 2019. She sued in 2022 under a New York law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on assault claims that are decades old.

The case is Trump v. Carroll, 25-573.

Top Photo: E. Jean Carroll arrives to federal court in New York in 2023. Bloomberg.