Judge frees $5.8 million for E. Jean Carroll from Trump escrow
What’s next: Trump appealed within hours, but the order followed the Supreme Court’s refusal to revisit the 2023 verdict.
A federal judge ordered that E. Jean Carroll be paid the $5.8 million, including interest, that Donald Trump placed in a court-controlled account after a 2023 civil verdict found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming her. Judge Lewis Kaplan issued the order Wednesday after the Supreme Court recently let the verdict stand. Trump’s lawyers quickly asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to block the payment. A New York jury awarded Carroll $5 million in May 2023 over her claim that Trump assaulted her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in Manhattan and then defamed her by denying it. Trump has denied the allegations and is separately appealing an $83 million defamation award Carroll won in 2024.