Appeals court upholds E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 million defamation judgment against President Trump

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a civil jury’s finding that President Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for his repeated social media attacks and public statements against the longtime advice columnist after she accused him of sexual assault.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s appeal of the defamation award, finding that the “jury’s damages awards are fair and reasonable.”

“The record in this case supports the district court’s determination that the ‘the degree of reprehensibility’ of Mr. Trump’s conduct was remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented,” the three-judge appeals panel said. ”Carroll was subjected to ongoing and prolific harassment as a result of these statements, including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury.”

Trump had argued the damages were unreasonably excessive, particularly a $65 million punitive damage award, and pushed for a new trial in light of the Supreme Court’s expansion of presidential immunity.

But the appeals court roundly rejected those arguments, writing that Trump’s “extraordinary and unprecedented” broadsides against Carroll, 81, justified the steep award.

“Given the unique and egregious facts of this case, we conclude that the punitive damages award did not exceed the bounds of reasonableness,” the three-judge panel concluded.

Attorneys for Trump didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, though it was likely that they will appeal to the Supreme Court.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, welcomed the decision.

“Earlier today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed, in a comprehensive 70-page ruling, that E. Jean Carroll was telling the truth, and that President Donald Trump was not,” Kaplan said in a statement, noting that her client had received threats during the legal process and that they “look forward to an end to the appellate process.”

At trial, Carroll testified about receiving hundreds of death threats after Trump spoke out against her. She also lost her decadeslong career at Elle magazine and she was no longer invited on television shows.

The ruling centered on the second — and far more expensive — of two defamation awards issued to Carroll over Trump’s yearslong attacks on her character, which began after she accused Trump in her 2019 memoir of sexually assaulting her decades earlier at a Manhattan department store.

In her memoir and again at a 2023 trial, Carroll described how a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue in 1996 started with the two flirting as they shopped, then ended with a violent struggle inside a dressing room.

Carroll said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her.

At the initial trial, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, but concluded he hadn’t committed rape as defined under New York law.

Trump repeatedly denied that the encounter took place and accused Carroll of making it up to help sell her book. He also said Carroll was “not my type.”

The 2023 jury awarded Carroll $5 million to compensate her for both the alleged attack and statements Trump made denying after his first presidency ended that it had happened.

After that first verdict, the court conducted a second trial with a new jury for the sole purpose of deciding damages for statements Trump made attacking Carroll’s character and truthfulness while he was president in 2019.

Trump skipped the first trial but attended the second, which took place as he was running for president in 2024. Speaking to reporters throughout the second trial, Trump portrayed the lawsuit as part of a broader effort to smear him and prevent him from regaining the White House.

His lawyers complained that the judge, in setting rules for the damages trial, had barred Trump and his defense team from claiming in front of the jury that he was innocent of the attack. The judge ruled that that issue had been settled by the first jury and didn’t need to be revisited.

In its ruling Monday, the appeals court agreed, concluding that the trial judge “did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury’s duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case.”

The 2nd Circuit noted that Trump continued his attacks against Carroll for at least five years, making them “more extreme and frequent as the trial approached.”

“He also continued these same attacks during the trial itself,” the appeals court said. “In one such statement, issued two days into the trial, Trump proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll ‘a thousand times.’”

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Associated Press Writer Larry Neumeister contributed to this report.

Jake Offenhartz, The Associated Press