President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice have separately petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn a civil court verdict ordering Trump to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million. This sum was awarded after a jury found Trump defamed Carroll following her public claim of sexual assault in the mid-1990s. Trump’s lawyers argue that the verdict must be overturned, citing a 2024 Supreme Court ruling that granted presidents immunity for official acts.
Trump’s legal team asserts that his 2019 comments about Carroll, made while he was president, fall under this immunity. They told the court, “This is the first case in our Nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a President for his conduct in office.” The filing claims that “most of a President’s public communications” are official acts. Trump’s lawyers stated, “Here, the President of the United States has been ordered to pay nearly $100 million in damages — including post-judgment interest — for issuing a press release and answering reporters’ questions, from the White House, defending against attacks on his fitness for office.”
The State's Defense of Capital
The Justice Department’s petition mirrors Trump’s argument, contending that the U.S. government should have been substituted for Trump as the defendant. This substitution, if allowed, would dismiss the case under the Westfall Act, which shields federal employees from certain civil claims for conduct performed in the course of their duties, including defamation. This maneuver would effectively shift the financial burden from Trump to federal taxpayers, though CNN reported it would "almost certainly mean the end of Carroll’s defamation case."
This latest appeal follows the Supreme Court’s rejection a month prior of Trump’s request to hear his appeal of a separate $5 million verdict in Carroll’s favor. Carroll has already received that money, plus over $600,000 in interest, from a court fund where Trump had deposited the funds. Trump has also launched a "longshot effort" to get the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear that earlier appeal.
In May 2023, a Manhattan federal court jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the 1990s and for defaming her in late 2022. The second case, now before the Supreme Court, saw another Manhattan federal court jury in January 2024 find Trump civilly liable for defaming Carroll in 2019. That $83.3 million verdict was upheld by the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
The Cost of Impunity
Trump’s lawyers argued that the 2nd Circuit "wrongly held that President Trump had somehow forfeited the defense of Presidential immunity." They claim Trump "repeatedly invoked that immunity." CNN reported that the appeal relies heavily on the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision granting the president wide immunity for actions taken in office. Trump told the justices that an appeals court decision in Carroll’s favor would "cause significant damage, not only to this president and future presidents" but also the nation.
US Circuit Judge Denny Chin, nominated by President Barack Obama, noted that "Presidential immunity was not raised for the first three years of this case." Chin also resisted the effort to substitute the United States as a defendant, writing that "no other defendant would be permitted to move to substitute the United States in his place, fifteen months after trial and the entry of judgment against him." The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stated that the "degree of reprehensibility" of Trump’s conduct was "remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented." The court found that Trump’s repeated comments led to "a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury" against Carroll, and that the jury was allowed to find Trump would not stop defaming Carroll without a substantial financial penalty. Carroll’s attorneys declined to comment on the latest filing.