E. Jean Carroll has collected more than $5.6 million from Donald Trump after the U.S. Supreme Court let a 2023 civil jury verdict stand, ending one chapter of a legal battle that began with allegations dating back nearly three decades. Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the payment on Tuesday.
The money, representing the original $5 million jury award plus accumulated interest, had sat in an escrow account since 2023, when a unanimous nine-person jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a New York City department store dressing room in 1996 and for defaming her. Trump's legal team fought to keep the funds locked up, but a federal judge ordered their release after the Supreme Court declined to hear Trump's appeal.
The precise amount wired to Carroll was $5,625,005.48, the Washington Examiner reported, citing court records that confirmed the electronic transfer.
Carroll, now 82, is a former advice columnist who first told her story publicly in a 2019 memoir, alleging that Trump attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996. She sued under a New York law that gave sexual abuse survivors a fresh chance to bring claims over attacks that occurred in the distant past, a legal change that opened a door long closed by the statute of limitations.
Trump did not attend the 2023 trial. He has consistently denied the allegations, insisting nothing sexual happened between them. In a 2019 interview, he called Carroll "totally lying" and said she was "not my type." He said he did not know her and dismissed a 1987 photo showing them with their then-spouses at a party as inconsequential.
Trump also accused Carroll of harboring political motives and trying to sell books at his expense. Those denials formed the basis of the defamation claims the jury ultimately credited.
The payment became possible only after the Supreme Court recently let the civil verdict stand. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan then cleared the escrowed funds for release. Trump's lawyers sought an emergency order to block the disbursement, but the court denied it in a one-sentence order that set no conditions on how Carroll could use the money.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll's attorney, issued a statement after the transfer, as AP News reported:
"Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict."
Carroll herself wrote on Substack after receiving the payment: "The eagle has landed."
Her lawyers stated in court papers that she plans to put the money in a retirement account.
Trump's attorneys have not stopped fighting. Since the payment was wired, they filed another appeal seeking to stop or reverse it. The specific grounds for that appeal remain unclear from available court filings.
A separate and far larger judgment also hangs over the former president. In 2024, a Manhattan jury awarded Carroll $83 million in defamation compensation after a trial where Trump briefly testified. Trump is appealing that verdict as well. His legal team has sought a stay of the $83.3 million judgment while pursuing Supreme Court review.
A federal appeals court paused that larger payment pending further review, keeping the funds out of Carroll's hands for now. But the trajectory of the smaller case, where every legal maneuver to delay payment ultimately failed, raises questions about whether the larger verdict will follow the same path.
Earlier in the legal saga, a federal appeals court denied Trump's bid to reopen the defamation verdict, narrowing his options for reversing the outcome.
For Trump's critics, the Carroll verdicts represent accountability. For his supporters, they represent a weaponized legal system, civil claims enabled by a retroactive change in New York law, tried in a jurisdiction hostile to the former president, and pressed by a plaintiff whose credibility has itself come under scrutiny. The Department of Justice has opened a criminal perjury investigation into Carroll, a development that adds a sharp counterpoint to the narrative of a clean-cut verdict.
The facts of the underlying case remain fiercely contested. Trump denied knowing Carroll. Carroll testified that a flirtatious and friendly chance encounter at the department store turned violent. A jury credited her account. Trump never appeared at the first trial to contest it in person.
The Washington Times noted that the Supreme Court's decision to let the verdict stand cleared the final obstacle to payment, and Just The News confirmed that the funds were released from escrow after that ruling.
What remains unresolved is whether any of Trump's pending appeals, on either the $5.6 million or the $83 million verdict, will gain traction. His legal team has vowed to keep fighting, but the pattern so far has been one of diminishing options. Every emergency motion has been denied. Every appeal has been rejected or remains pending without a stay.
The broader question is whether New York's retroactive law, designed to revive long-expired claims, will survive its own legal challenges, or whether it will continue to serve as a template for cases that reach back decades into contested memory. For now, the money is in Carroll's hands, and the courts have said she can spend it however she likes.
When the legal system lets a plaintiff collect millions on allegations nearly thirty years old, enabled by a law written after the fact, the question isn't just whether justice was done, it's whether the rules were built to reach a verdict or to reach a target.
