US President Donald Trump on Monday requested that the US Supreme Court consider the $5 million civil lawsuit alleging that he had defamed and sexually assaulted magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll.
A federal appeals court ruled last year that the trial judge did not make mistakes that would call for a new trial, upholding the jury’s verdict and the $5 million judgement against Trump. The US president’s attempt to have the appeal heard by the entire bench of judges was unsuccessful in June.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the civil trial, according to Trump, committed multiple mistakes by permitting the jury to hear testimony from two women who claimed that Trump had sexually abused them years ago.
Additionally, his attorneys argued that the court ought not to have allowed the jury to view the “Access Hollywood tape,” that was reported by the Washington Post which showed Trump on a hot mic in 2005 claiming to groping and kissing women.
Carroll filed a lawsuit against Trump, claiming he had sexually assaulted her in a department store in New York in the middle of the 1990s and had defamed her. In 2019, Trump denied the incident, claiming she wasn’t “his type,” and stated she had made it up to increase her book sales.
“There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation. Instead, 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,” Trump said to the Supreme Court in the appeal filed Monday, and viewed by CNN.
The Supreme Court has not yet formally docketed the appeal.
It’s not clear if the Supreme Court will consider the case, but it probably won’t be the last time the justices are asked to review cases involving Carroll.
Trump was forced to pay $83 million in damages after a different jury found him guilty of defaming Carroll for repeating his remarks in 2022. A panel of the federal appeals court dismissed numerous of Trump’s legal challenges and upheld the damages decision, finding it “reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts.”
Among these, the appeals court determined that Trump had previously renounced any claim of presidential immunity and stated that their opinion was unaffected by the Supreme Court’s ruling in criminal cases last year.
The president has requested that the case be reviewed by the whole judicial bench. In support of a reconsideration of the question of whether presidential immunity can be waived “from civil damages liability predicated on official acts,” the Justice Department filed an amicus brief. Carroll has a couple of weeks to respond.