Trump’s Bad Day in Court Gets Even Worse with E. Jean Carroll Loss

Donald Trump is going to have to pony up $83 million to E. Jean Carroll after all, after a judge  on Thursday struck down Trump’s latest attempt to get a new trial.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over both of Trump’s trials against Carroll, denied the former president’s appeal of the verdict in Carroll’s second defamation lawsuit A jury determined that Trump owed Carroll $83 million in damages for defamation.

Trump is unlikely to be happy about losing his appeal, considering how he can’t stop bashing Carroll even with multiple legal judgments against him for it. Kaplan even felt it necessary to warn the jury not to reveal their participation in the trial, after the court ruling in January.

Trump has also appealed the Carroll ruling to the Second Circuit court. That decision is pending. Kaplan’s Thursday ruling is just the latest in a series of setbacks in Trump’s attempt to avoid paying Carroll damages.

The former president was found guilty of defaming Carroll after she revealed that he sexually abused her in the mid-1990s. A jury awarded Carroll $7.3 million for damage to her reputation, $11 million for emotional harm, and $65 million for punitive damages. Carroll has big plans for the money: giving it to something Trump hates. 

“If it will cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent,” Carroll told Good Morning America in January. “Well, perhaps a fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.”

At least 26 other women have accused Trump of some kind of sexual misconduct, but Carroll’s case was the first to get into a courtroom, and twice at that: In May 2023, another jury found Trump guilty of defaming Carroll and liable for sexual abuse and battery against her.

The decision came as Trump was in court for his hush-money trial in Manhattan, where he faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. The court heard testimony from tabloid magnate David Pecker Wednesday and Thursday, and adult film actress Stormy Daniels is scheduled to testify later Thursday.