Appeals court won't reconsider ruling that Trump must pay E. Jean
Carroll $5M in sex abuse case
[June 14, 2025]
By MICHAEL R. SISAK
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court won’t reconsider its ruling
upholding a $5 million civil judgment against President Donald Trump in
a civil lawsuit alleging he sexually abused a writer in a Manhattan
department store in the mid-1990s.
In an 8-2 vote Friday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected
Trump’s petition for the full appellate court to rehear arguments in his
challenge to the jury’s finding that he sexually abused advice columnist
E. Jean Carroll and defamed her with comments he made in October 2022.
Carroll testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly encounter
in spring 1996 into a violent attack after they playfully entered the
store’s dressing room.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld the verdict in December,
rejecting Trump’s claims that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s decisions
spoiled the trial, including allowing two other Trump sexual abuse
accusers to testify.
The women said Trump committed similar acts against them in the 1970s
and in 2005. Trump denied all three women’s allegations.
In an opinion Friday, four judges voting to reject rehearing wrote:
“Simply re-litigating a case is not an appropriate use” of the process.
“In those rare instances in which a case warrants our collective
consideration, it is almost always because it involves a question of
exceptional importance,” or a conflict between precedent and the
appellate panel’s opinion, Judges Myrna Pérez, Eunice C. Lee, Beth
Robinson and Sarah A.L. Merriam wrote.
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All four were appointed by President Joe Biden, Trump’s one-time
Democratic rival.
The two dissenting judges, Trump appointees, Steven J. Menashi and
Michael H. Park, wrote that the trial “consisted of a series of
indefensible evidentiary rulings.”
“The result was a jury verdict based on impermissible character
evidence and few reliable facts,” they wrote. “No one can have any
confidence that the jury would have returned the same verdict if the
normal rules of evidence had been applied.”
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement: “E. Jean
Carroll is very pleased with today’s decision.”
“Although President Trump continues to try every possible maneuver
to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have
failed. He remains liable for sexual assault and defamation,” said
Kaplan, who is not related to the judge.
Trump skipped the trial after repeatedly denying the attack ever
happened. He briefly testified at a follow-up defamation trial last
year that resulted in an $83.3 million award. The second trial
resulted from comments then-President Trump made in 2019 after
Carroll first made the accusations publicly in a memoir.
Kaplan presided over both trials and instructed the second jury to
accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused
Carroll.
Arguments in that appeal are set for June 24.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been
sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has
done.
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