E. Jean Carroll already received the $5 million (plus interest) she won from President Donald Trump in one of the writer’s two civil cases against him. But the president is trying to claw back the money as he mounts a long-shot attempt to convince the Supreme Court to reconsider reviewing his appeal in that case, even though the justices recently declined review without any of them dissenting.
Opposing Trump’s bid in the meantime, Carroll’s lawyers summed up the long-running litigation like this: “Defendant has lost before a jury, the district court, a unanimous Second Circuit panel, the full Second Circuit, en banc, and the Supreme Court of the United States. He agreed — in a signed stipulation — that Carroll could collect her judgment once his certiorari petition had been denied. That happened. Carroll should not have to wait any longer.”
The president’s motion to make her wait longer is pending before the 2nd Circuit federal appeals court, where he insisted on that further delay until the Supreme Court “has fully finished its consideration of the petition, which includes the petition for rehearing.”
Carroll’s lawyers noted in their opposition filing that a previous stipulation between the parties said nothing about a rehearing petition, so she objected to what her lawyers called Trump’s attempt to “re-write the plain language of the parties’ agreement.”
They further noted the extreme rarity of the Supreme Court granting rehearing petitions in general, and they said the president has failed to show why his case is an exception to that general rule.
Trump said his case is different because of the forthcoming appeal that he will file to the justices in the other case that Carroll won against him, in which a jury awarded her $83.3 million. The $5 million case stemmed from a New York jury’s finding that the president sexually abused her in 1996 and defamed her about it in 2022, in between his two presidential terms. The $83.3 million case stems from a defamation award over statements Trump made during his first term.
In his pending Supreme Court rehearing petition, Trump said his high court appeal in the $83.3 million case “will present important questions concerning Presidential immunity for statements President Trump made in 2019, while serving as President, and through official White House channels.” He said those questions will “bear on the proper disposition” of the $5 million case because of the Supreme Court’s 2024 presidential immunity ruling in Trump’s favor, which said, among other things, that official presidential acts can’t be used as evidence to impose liability for other conduct.
Therefore, he argued that the court’s disposition of the $83.3 million case “would affect whether those very same statements could properly have been introduced and emphasized” in the $5 million case.
The Supreme Court hasn’t yet said whether it will grant or deny Trump’s rehearing petition, and the court isn’t on a strict timeline to decide. The new petition in the $83.3 million case is due July 28.
Carroll said in her 2nd Circuit opposition filing that one of the problems with Trump’s Supreme Court rehearing argument is that he already alerted the justices to his upcoming petition in the $83.3 million case before they denied review of the $5 million case.
“The sole ground for rehearing was therefore already before the Supreme Court when it denied certiorari,” Carroll’s lawyers argued to the 2nd Circuit as one of the several reasons they said the appeals court should deny Trump’s latest motion.
Of course, while it’s a long shot, it’s still to be determined what the Supreme Court does with the rehearing petition and what the 2nd Circuit does with Trump’s motion. To be sure, his chances of success are low on both fronts.
Whatever happens there, however, it will be a separate question whether the Supreme Court will grant review of the forthcoming petition in the $83.3 million case, which may present legal issues (including presidential immunity) that the justices are more interested in than the petition they denied in the $5 million case, which focused on more legally mundane evidentiary issues.
We won’t likely know what the justices will do with that new petition until the fall, at least, so even if the litigation over the $5 million is practically settled, the litigation over the much larger award is not.
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