Trump Begs Judge to Give Back Money He Just Paid E. Jean Carroll
Donald Trump has made billions of dollars grifting the American public since returning to office, yet he’s still trying to find a way to weasel out of paying E. Jean Carroll.The president cannot accept the reality that he lost: Trump’s legal team demanded that the former Elle columnist repay him the $5.6 million that he was court-mandated to give her, The Independent reported Tuesday.The money was disbursed to Carroll from a court-controlled escrow account on July 9—three years after a nine-person jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and defaming her in the early 2020s when she went public about the attack. Trump had done everything in his power to avoid paying Carroll her due, including attempting to take the case to the Supreme Court, although it ultimately refused to hear the case in June.“But rather than accept the reality that he had lost, [Trump] has engaged in a series of maneuvers trying desperately to forestall payment,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote in a legal filing Monday night, noting that the payment should have been the end of the case.“But Defendant now demands yet another unprecedented remedy,” Carroll’s attorneys continued. “The judgment here is final, the money has already been disbursed, and Carroll is entitled to keep it.”Her team added that each of the president’s attacks has a “domino effect” that subjects the writer to “ongoing and prolific harassment” from people who take Trump’s word as gospel, “including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury.”The sum is just the tip of the iceberg for how much Trump owes Carroll, however. After the 2023 civil case, Trump tried and failed to sue Carroll for defamation, insisting, despite the jury’s determination, that he had not sexually abused her. A federal judge eventually ruled that Trump—not Carroll—was the liable party, as he had defamed the advice columnist by denying the sexual abuse on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of inventing the sexual assault allegations against him for the benefit of her book. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case, though Carroll has not yet seen a dime from that decision.