The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear President Donald Trump's appeal of a $5 million jury verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, a decision that came without explanation, without a single noted dissent, and without any public indication that even four justices wanted to take up the case.
The brief, unsigned order ends Trump's effort to overturn the 2023 verdict and leaves the judgment intact. It also means a conservative-majority Court, one shaped in large part by Trump's own nominees, could not muster the votes to grant review.
Whatever one thinks of the underlying case, and Trump's legal team raised serious questions about trial fairness, the procedural reality is stark. Every appellate door Trump tried has now closed on the $5 million judgment. And a far larger $83.3 million verdict from a separate Carroll defamation trial still looms on a parallel appellate track.
Carroll alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan around 1996. She first made the allegation public in 2019, in an excerpt from her memoir, more than two decades after the alleged incident. Trump denied the claims during his first term and again in 2022, when he was out of office, calling Carroll's account a "hoax" and a "con job" in a social media post and adding, "This woman is not my type!"
Carroll sued Trump in Manhattan federal court after those 2022 statements. In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her, awarding $5 million in damages. National Review noted the jury deliberated for just three hours before reaching its verdict. The jury did not, however, find that Trump raped Carroll, a distinction his supporters have consistently emphasized.
A second jury, in a separate defamation case tied to Trump's 2019 denials, awarded Carroll $83.3 million in 2024. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined in 2025 to throw out that verdict. That judgment is still being appealed and has not yet reached the Supreme Court.
Trump's lawyers made a straightforward argument to the Supreme Court: the trial was tainted. In their petition, they wrote that the trial judge "erroneously allowed testimony about multiple decades-old, unverified and unrelated allegations to be presented to the jury." The filing also challenged the admission of the 2005 "Access Hollywood" recording, in which Trump made crude boasts about his sexual conduct.
The evidentiary question was not frivolous. Federal courts have long wrestled with how much prior-bad-act evidence a jury should hear before it stops weighing the facts and starts punishing a defendant for his character. Trump's attorneys argued this case crossed that line.
But the Manhattan-based 2nd Circuit rejected the argument in 2024, ruling that the contested evidence, including the "Access Hollywood" video, established a "repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct" consistent with Carroll's allegations. The Washington Examiner reported that Trump's attorneys specifically objected to testimony from two other accusers who alleged sexual misconduct, but the Second Circuit found the trial's outcome would have been unchanged regardless of that testimony.
The Supreme Court's refusal to take up the case means none of those evidentiary rulings will receive further review.
Trump's lawyers did not limit their filing to procedural arguments. They also attacked Carroll's credibility and motives directly, writing that "Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th President, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself."
That framing echoed what Trump himself has said for years. And it reflects a broader concern among conservatives that politically motivated civil litigation has been weaponized against Trump at every stage of his political career, from the Russia investigation to multiple state-level prosecutions to this case.
Trump's relationship with the Supreme Court has been complicated in his second term. The Court has sided with his administration on some executive authority questions, but it has also handed him notable defeats.
Newsmax reported that attorney Justin D. Smith, whom Trump has since nominated to be an appeals court judge, wrote in the filing that "this mistreatment of a President cannot be allowed to stand." Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan countered that "this question is not worthy of review."
Following the decision, Kaplan said Trump's "multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today's ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions." Trump responded on social media, calling the case "really against the United States of America, and all it stands for."
The Supreme Court denial does not end all legal activity surrounding the Carroll matter. Reuters reported that Trump's Justice Department launched a criminal investigation targeting Carroll, disclosed in May, focused on whether she committed perjury in testimony tied to the two civil lawsuits she won against Trump.
That investigation, initiated by the DOJ under Trump's own appointees, raises its own set of questions. Whether the probe results in charges, a grand jury, or quietly fades remains unknown. But its existence signals that the administration views Carroll's testimony as potentially vulnerable to criminal scrutiny, even as the civil verdicts against Trump stand.
The interaction between the Supreme Court denial and the DOJ investigation is unclear. The Court's refusal to hear the appeal does not, by itself, validate or invalidate Carroll's testimony. But it does mean the $5 million judgment is final, and Carroll's credibility, at least in the eyes of two juries and two levels of appellate review, has survived every challenge Trump's legal team has mounted.
Trump has publicly clashed with the Court before, including naming specific justices he appointed in sharp social media posts after unfavorable rulings. The Carroll denial, with its silence and unanimity, offers no individual target for that kind of response.
Several questions hang over the case. No justice issued a written statement explaining why the Court passed. The specific evidentiary rules Trump's lawyers cited in their petition were not identified in public reporting. And the full text of Trump's 2022 social media post, beyond the quoted fragments, has not been widely reproduced.
The $83.3 million verdict from the second Carroll trial remains on appeal and could eventually reach the Supreme Court on its own track. That case involves Trump's 2019 statements denying Carroll's allegations, statements made while he was serving as president, which raises separate legal questions about presidential immunity and official conduct that the first case did not squarely address.
The Court has also declined to hear other cases touching on Trump-era policy in recent months, a pattern that suggests the justices are picking their battles carefully rather than wading into every politically charged dispute.
For now, the $5 million verdict stands. Carroll's legal team claims vindication. Trump's team calls it a miscarriage of justice. And the DOJ perjury investigation, a counterpunch from Trump's own executive branch, remains the one active front where the administration still holds the initiative.
The Carroll matter also intersects with broader questions about how the judiciary handles Trump's relationship with the federal courts, including future Supreme Court nominations that could reshape the bench for a generation.
Trump's lawyers raised a legitimate concern about trial fairness. The admission of decades-old, uncharged allegations from other accusers and a leaked hot-mic recording from an unrelated context is exactly the kind of evidence that can turn a civil trial into a character referendum. Whether or not you believe Carroll, the question of how much prejudicial material a jury should hear before deliberating is a real one, and one the Supreme Court chose not to answer.
That silence is itself a verdict. Not on the merits. Not on Carroll's credibility. But on the Court's appetite for wading into a case that has become as much a political symbol as a legal dispute.
When the highest court in the land won't even take a look, the system has spoken, whether the system got it right or not.
