Trump pays $7.2m to writer E. Jean Carroll in sexual abuse case

• Donald Trump has paid US$5.6 million to writer E. Jean Carroll after a jury found him liable for sexual assault and defamation.
• The US Supreme Court refused to hear Trump's appeal, making the May 2023 verdict final.
• Carroll accused Trump of assault in 1996 and was previously awarded US$83.3 million in a separate defamation case, though enforcement is suspended.

NEW YORK - New York writer E. Jean Carroll received the US$5 million (S$6.45 million) plus interest that she won from US President Donald Trump in her sexual-abuse lawsuit three years ago, days after Trump failed to sway a judge to block the transfer during a last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court.

A total of $5.6 million (S$7.2 milion) was transferred on July 13 by the US court system, which had been holding the money, to an account set up for Carroll by her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, according to a docket entry in the civil case in New York on July 14.

A judge ordered the transfer after the Supreme Court on June 29 left intact a jury’s verdict finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll in 1996 and defamed her in a 2022 social-media post that called her claims a “hoax” and a “complete con job” and said that Carroll “is not my type!”

Trump on July 6 asked the justices to take the unusual step of reconsidering their rejection of his appeal.

A decision hasn’t yet been made.

“Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll,” Kaplan said in a statement.

“Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.”

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team issued a statement that did not address the transfer of funds, but called Carroll’s case against the president a “hoax” and a “Democrat-funded travesty.”

Kaplan said in a recent court filing that Carroll did not intend to use the money until the Supreme Court decides on Trump’s request for reconsideration, which she has called a delay tactic.

Carroll plans to use the money for her retirement, Kaplan said.

Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, went public with her allegations in 2019.

She sued in 2022 under a New York law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on assault claims that are decades old.

A jury of six men and three women found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in May 2023.

The verdict is one of two Carroll won against Trump, who has indicated he also will seek Supreme Court review of an US$83.3 million award in a separate defamation suit.

The Justice Department says it will join that effort, which is likely to raise distinct legal issues because that case centres on comments Trump made while he was president.

In the lawsuit that produced the US$5 million verdict, Carroll accused Trump of assaulting her a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in 1996.

Trump argued that jurors shouldn’t have been allowed to hear testimony about two prior alleged sexual assaults or listen to the Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted in vulgar terms that he could grab women by their genitalia without consent. BLOOMBERG