Trump wants delay, E. Jean Carroll wants verdict paid

Author E. Jean Carroll is seeking the immediate release of nearly $5.8 million owed to her from a civil jury verdict holding President Donald Trump liable for sexually harassing and defaming her, her attorneys say in a new court filing.

But Trump wants to delay that so he can ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to hear his appeal on Monday. Application to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Such a request is rarely granted.

And Carroll flatly rejects the suggestion of allowing any further delay in receiving his payment.

“This is the end of the road,” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote in a filing to District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan Tuesday night, asking him to order the release of funds appropriated by Trump to cover the May 2023 jury verdict.

“To date, Carroll has granted Defendant’s many requests to defer payment owed to him,” wrote Kaplan, who is not related to the judge. “Given that he has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid such payments and that each of these efforts has been completely rejected, this collaboration ends today.”

“It’s time to pay Carroll.”

The filing includes previous statements by Judge Kaplan, who said Trump used litigation tactics that suggested he had a “strong desire” to delay the case, and a related lawsuit filed against him by Carroll.

“A petition for rehearing would likely fail,” Kaplan wrote. “To require Carroll to endure any further delay while the defendant wishes to rehearse would be both grossly unfair and detrimental to the public interest.”

When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said: “The American people stand with President Trump in demanding an immediate end to all Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoaxes.”

“President Trump will continue to win against Liberal Law while remaining focused on his mission to Make America Great Again,” said the spokesperson, who asked to remain anonymous.

Judge Kaplan on Wednesday ordered Trump’s lawyers to respond to Carroll’s request to give him the award next Tuesday.

The jury in the case found that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in a Manhattan store dressing room in the mid-1990s and slandered Carroll by denying her allegations when they went public two decades later.

The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Since Trump deposited money with the court to secure the decision pending appeal, that money has earned nearly $800,000 in interest, which Carroll is also entitled to.

The $5 million judgment was cited as a liability in Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure report, made public Tuesday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

The same report notes that another Manhattan federal court jury awarded Carroll separate liability from the $83.3 million in damages that Trump slandered her when she denied sexually assaulting her. This award, which Trump continues to appeal, relates to statements the president made about Carroll that led to a $5 million verdict in the other case.

Trump unsuccessfully asked both Judge Kaplan and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the $5 million judgment.

And on Monday, the Supreme Court said it would not hear Trump’s appeal in the case.

There was no dissent from any of the nine justices to this decision; three of them were nominated by Trump during his first term in the White House.

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s rejection, Trump wrote a Truth Social post that “continued his defamatory attacks on Carroll,” Roberta Kaplan said in her new filing.

Trump wrote: “Shockingly, the Supreme Court refused to ‘review’ the Bogus Lawsuit filed against me by a woman I’ve never met (celebrity photo ops that stand with her husband for decades don’t count!).”

Kaplan wrote that within minutes of the post, Trump’s lawyers contacted Carroll’s lawyers to ask if the president would agree to further delay enforcement of the award so he could “ask the Supreme Court to reconsider the denial of certification.”

Certiorari is the term used when the Supreme Court agrees to review a case from lower courts.

Carroll’s attorneys told Trump’s team that Judge Kaplan had previously ordered the award to be paid “immediately upon denial of the petition for certiorari,” the filing said.

Roberta Kaplan wrote that Trump’s lawyer later “clarified that he had requested that Carroll authorize a ‘resuspension’ of the payment or continued execution.”

Kaplan said Trump told his lawyer that Carroll did not agree to delay the release of the funds.

He also asked whether Trump would agree to condition the release of the funds. Trump’s lawyer said the president could not answer that question before Thursday, according to the filing.

Kaplan wrote that there was “no practical or equitable reason” for the Supreme Court to delay awarding money to Carroll “based solely on the theoretical possibility of a hearing.”

He noted that the high court grants certiorari in only a few cases each year.

“And rehearsing is a much more extraordinary solution, accepted only under narrow circumstances,” he wrote.

“There is no reason to believe that the Supreme Court will make this decision here.”