The Supreme Court already denied the first of Donald Trump’s two petitions against E. Jean Carroll. But the second petition, filed Tuesday, stands a better chance of gaining the high court’s interest because it raises presidential immunity and is backed by the Justice Department.
The first petition came in Trump’s appeal of the $5 million judgment Carroll won against him from a jury that found him liable for sexually abusing her in 1996 and defaming her in 2022, when he was in between his two presidential terms. His appeal centered on arguments that evidence was wrongly admitted against him. The justices rejected his petition in June, and he is currently pressing a long-shot attempt to convince them to reconsider (he’s also trying to convince an appeals court to make Carroll return the money in the meantime while his rehearing petition is pending).
The new petition is Trump’s appeal from the $83.3 million defamation award that the writer won from another jury over statements he made while he was president during his first term, in 2019. That casts the second petition in a different light than the first, making it more about the presidency than Trump himself. Relatedly, that the DOJ is pressing its own petition is another thing that separates this latest effort from the first one in a way that could help him. The DOJ argues the government should have been substituted in his place as the defendant against Carroll.
To be sure, those differences don’t mean the latest effort will succeed. But the broader institutional issues presented this round give the president a better shot than his first petition, which raised questions like whether the “Access Hollywood” tape that featured him talking about grabbing women by their genitals should’ve been kept out of his case.
Carroll will have a chance to make her own opposition arguments before the justices decide whether to grant or deny review. That decision won’t likely come until the fall, at least. It takes four justices to grant review.
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