On July 9, after years of legal wrangling, E. Jean Carroll was paid $5,625,005.48 by Donald Trump. Now he wants it all back.
The payout came at the end of a legal saga in which Trump’s legal team exhausted every available option to block the payment, which came as a result of a federal jury finding him liable for sexual abuse.
Trump continued to protest throughout, saying this was a “con job”, maintaining he’d “never met” her and claiming, “This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for.”
“Procedurally improper, substantively meritless”
A series of judges disagreed, culminating in Trump’s lawyers applying to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case without giving a reason. Trump’s lawyers even attempted a last-minute application to block the payout, but that too was denied.
Now Trump’s lawyers are applying for an emergency injunction ordering Carroll to return the payment, with The Independent reporting that it’s done with the hope that the Supreme Court will “grant him a legal Hail Mary and reverse the judgment”.
Carroll’s lawyers replied with a withering legal filing to the court:
“Rather than accept the reality that he had lost, Defendant has engaged in a series of maneuvers trying desperately to forestall payment. Those attempts failed on July 8, when this Court denied Defendant’s “emergency” request for a stay—his seventh in the related cases between these parties—permitting the district court to disburse the judgment.”
They go on to point out that Trump has so far lost before “a jury, the district court, a unanimous Second Circuit panel, the full Second Circuit, en banc, and the Supreme Court of the United States”, describing this newest application as “procedurally improper, substantively meritless, and yet another example of Defendant’s pattern of “slow-roll[ing] his defenses, asserting or inventing a new one each time his prior effort to delay the case fails.”
Trump’s lawyers’ urgency is on some level understandable, as Carroll has pledged to give away the money as soon as possible, saying it will go towards supporting women’s reproductive rights, funding campaigns to support voting rights, and supporting survivors of sexual assault.
Even if Trump’s current application fails and she keeps the $5.5 million, Carroll is also in line for a far larger $83.3 million, which was awarded to her after a jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll. This payment has already been upheld, but once again, Trump’s lawyers are applying to the Supreme Court in an effort to overturn it.
Carroll underlines that she is happy with her “simple life”, doesn’t need millions of dollars, and plans to get revenge on Trump by how she spends the money: “My mission is to make him so angry and so mad by taking this $83.3 million and giving it to things that Trump hates.”
Published: Jul 22, 2026 05:35 am