President Donald Trump on Monday requested an emergency injunction that would force E. Jean Carroll, the writer he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming, to return the $5.6 million he paid her less than two weeks ago — after a federal judge ordered him to.
Trump paid Carroll on July 9 from a court-controlled escrow account. He appears confident that the Supreme Court, with a conservative supermajority of 6-3, will rule in his favor. The MAGA leader appointed three of the nine justices during his first term in office.
Trump was found liable for sexual abuse in federal civil court by a jury in 2023 after Carroll said he raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. While Trump repeatedly denied the accusation and at one point falsely stated that he had never even met Carroll, he was ordered on July 8 to pay her.
“In the last analysis, defendant has been stalling this case for years,” he wrote in his ruling. “A jury unanimously concluded that he sexually abused and defamed plaintiff and awarded her damages accordingly. The judgment on that verdict has been upheld on appeal.”
Carroll sued him twice: Trump was found liable in the 2023 trial for sexually abusing and defaming the former Elle magazine columnist; a jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. A second trial in 2024 found him liable once again for defaming her, with the resulting verdict ordering Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million.
Her lawyers reacted to the president’s brazen motion in a court document filed Monday night with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, calling the request “procedurally improper, substantively meritless” and arguing it’s just “another example” of his “slow-roll” methods.
“On June 29, 2026, the United States Supreme Court denied Defendant’s petition for a writ of certiorari without dissent — an outcome that, as the parties had agreed and the district court ordered, entitled Carroll to ‘collect any moneys owed by Defendant to Plaintiff,’” it read.
Her filing continued, “But rather than accept the reality that he had lost, Defendant has engaged in a series of maneuvers trying desperately to forestall payment. Those attempts failed on July 8, when this Court denied Defendant’s ‘emergency’ request for a stay.”
Elizabeth Williams/Associated Press
The document went on to note that this was Trump’s seventh request across related cases involving him and Carroll, and that the court’s decision to deny this request legally allowed the court “to disburse the judgment” of $5.6 million from the initial verdict against him.
Trump has continued to fight the $83 million verdict, meanwhile, with a court filing reportedly signed by Department of Justice officials earlier this year claiming there is “good cause” to pause the case and to let his administration argue for Trump’s immunity on his behalf.