A federal appeals court on Tuesday let Donald Trump delay paying an $83 million defamation award to E. Jean Carroll while the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to hear his appeal.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also ordered Trump to post a $7.4 million bond to cover additional interest costs during the delay, granting a request Carroll’s attorney had made as the case moved forward. The panel declined, however, to convene the full court in an unusual bid by Trump to revisit a three-judge ruling that had already upheld the January 2024 verdict.
Trump lawyer Justin D. Smith told the court last week there was a “fair prospect” the Supreme Court would side with Trump. The appeals court did not accept that invitation to relitigate the case immediately, but it did agree that Trump should not have to pay the award before the justices act or turn it away.
Carroll has publicly said since 2019 that Trump sexually attacked her in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in spring 1996. A jury awarded her $83 million after hearing Trump testify briefly and watching his animated courtroom behavior for several days. In September, a 2nd Circuit panel said Trump kept attacking Carroll for at least five years and made the attacks more extreme and frequent as the trial approached, and that he continued the same conduct during the trial itself. Trump told jurors he would keep defaming her “a thousand times.”
The delay covers a verdict that followed an earlier May 2023 trial, when a separate jury awarded Carroll $5 million after finding Trump sexually abused her in the store and later defamed her after she described the encounter in a 2019 memoir. The January 2024 jury was told to accept those earlier findings, and Trump is now challenging the larger award on several grounds, including his argument that comments he made while president are protected by absolute immunity.
Trump has called Carroll’s allegations a “made up scam,” but the court’s decision leaves the verdict intact while moving the money question to the Supreme Court. If the justices decline to hear the case, the stay ends and the payment fight returns to the lower courts with the bond in place.
