Supreme Court declines Trump appeal of $5M Carroll verdict

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear President Donald Trump's appeal of a $5 million civil judgment against him, leaving in place a jury's 2023 verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. The justices issued the order without comment or noted dissent, effectively ending Trump's legal challenge to the verdict.

The case stems from a lawsuit Carroll filed in 2022 under a New York law that opened a window for sexual abuse survivors to file civil claims for past incidents. She alleged that Trump assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. The defamation claim was based on a 2022 social media post in which Trump called her allegations a "hoax" and a "con job."

A federal jury in New York found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in May 2023, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages. The jury did not find that Trump raped Carroll, as she had claimed. The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict in 2024.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Trump's lawyers argued the trial was unfair. They contended that U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan,...