Former US President Donald Trump has formally requested the nation's highest court to dismiss a civil jury's verdict which found him liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E Jean Carroll in the 1990s and for subsequently defaming her.
The Core of Trump's Supreme Court Challenge
In a substantial legal filing submitted on Monday, Trump's legal team, spearheaded by attorney Justin D Smith from St. Louis, Missouri, petitioned the US Supreme Court to invalidate the jury's decision. They contend that the $5 million verdict was secured through a process marred by improper judicial rulings.
The lawyers argued that the trial judge, Lewis A Kaplan, distorted federal evidence rules to support what they labelled Carroll's "politically motivated hoax". A significant point of their appeal focuses on Judge Kaplan's decision to permit testimony from two other women who accused Trump of similar sexual misconduct in the 1970s and 2005. Trump's team described this as "highly inflammatory propensity evidence" that unfairly prejudiced the jury.
"President Trump has clearly and consistently denied that this supposed incident ever occurred," Smith and his co-counsel wrote. They further emphasised the lack of physical, DNA, or eyewitness evidence to support Carroll's account.
The Allegations and Previous Court Rulings
E Jean Carroll, a well-known writer and former television host, testified during a 2023 trial that Trump assaulted her in a dressing room at the luxury New York department store Bergdorf Goodman in the spring of 1996. The jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and for defamation following comments he made in October 2022 denying her allegations.
This legal battle has unfolded across two trials. Trump did not attend the first trial but gave brief testimony in a subsequent defamation trial last year. That second trial concluded with a jury ordering him to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million for defamatory statements he made in 2019 after she publicly detailed the assault in her memoir.
Judge Kaplan presided over both trials and instructed the second jury to accept the first jury's finding that sexual abuse had occurred. A spokesperson for Trump's legal team characterised the Supreme Court appeal as part of the former president's fight against "Liberal Lawfare" and "Democrat-funded travesty".
The Legal Road Ahead
The path to the Supreme Court was paved after a three-judge appellate panel upheld the verdict in December 2024, rejecting Trump's claims of judicial error. Following this, in June, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied Trump's petition for the full court to rehear the case.
This left Trump with a choice: allow Carroll to collect the judgment, which he had previously paid into an escrow account, or escalate the matter to the Supreme Court. The nation's top court, with a conservative majority that includes three of Trump's own appointees, may prove more receptive to his arguments regarding the application of federal evidence rules.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll's lawyer (no relation to the judge), previously expressed scepticism about the merit of a Supreme Court appeal. When Trump's lawyers first signalled their intention in September, she stated, "We do not believe that President Trump will be able to present any legal issues in the Carroll cases that merit review."
This appeal represents another high-stakes legal manoeuvre for Trump, who recently succeeded in having a massive penalty in a New York civil fraud case dismissed.
