Trump pays E Jean Carroll $5.6m in sex abuse and defamation case | US News

The writer E Jean Carroll has received a multimillion dollar payout more than three years after she was awarded it by the jury in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump.

The $5.6m (£4.2m) payment – comprising the $5m jury award, plus interest – was made on Monday from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict, court records show.

“We are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment,” Ms Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement.

The president’s lawyers have signalled they will continue appealing.

Mr Trump deposited the money in an escrow account shortly after the jury’s decision.

The US Supreme Court recently let the civil verdict stand, with Judge Lewis A Kaplan then able to release the money.

The president’s lawyers subsequently sought an emergency order to block the payment, but were denied.

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No conditions were placed on how Ms Carroll may use the money by the one-sentence denial.

In court papers, her lawyers said that she plans to put it in a retirement account.

The president’s attorneys have since filed another appeal seeking to halt or reverse the payment.

On Tuesday, his legal team repeated a previous statement about the case, calling it a “witch hunt” and a “hoax”, and insisting the American people stand with him.

The jury found Mr Trump attacked Ms Carroll, a former advice columnist, in 1996 in a New York luxury department store dressing room.

He defamed her after she detailed the story in a memoir published in 2019, during his first term, the jury decided.

Mr Trump insisted nothing sexual happened between him and Ms Carroll, now 82.

In a 2019 interview, he claimed she was “not my type” and “totally lying”.

He said he didn’t know her, dismissing a 1987 photo of them and their then-spouses at a party as inconsequential.

He also accused her of having a political agenda and trying to sell books at his expense.

Mr Trump didn’t attend the trial, where Ms Carroll testified that their friendly and flirtatious chance meeting at the department store turned violent.

Ms Carroll sued him after New York changed its laws to give sexual abuse survivors another chance to sue over attacks from the distant past.

The president is also appealing $83m (£62m) in compensation granted to Ms Carroll by a separate Manhattan jury after a 2024 defamation trial where Mr Trump briefly testified.