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President Donald Trump has lost his latest bid to challenge a civil jury verdict holding him liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the 90s and then defaming her decades later when she went public with the allegations.
On Friday the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York declined Trump’s request for a court’s full bench to rehear his case. The decision leaves in place a December 2024 ruling by a three-judge panel upholding the 2023 jury verdict, which ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million in damages.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, welcomed the decision.
“E. Jean Carroll is very pleased with today’s ruling,” she said. “Although President Trump continues to try every possible maneuver to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have failed. He remains liable for sexual assault and defamation.”
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The case is one of two civil suits Carroll, now 81, has filed against Trump, both stemming from his public denials of her 2019 accusation that he sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in 1996.
In October 2022, Trump defamed Carroll on Truth Social by denying her claim as a hoax.
Carroll’s first lawsuit, related to Trump’s 2019 statements, ended in January 2024 with an $83.3 million defamation verdict in her favor. Trump is also appealing that outcome. Oral arguments in that appeal are scheduled for June 24.
The lawsuit at the center of Friday’s ruling was filed in 2022 after New York temporarily lifted its statute of limitations for certain sexual assault claims. It included both defamation and battery claims related to Carroll’s original allegations and Trump’s more recent comments.
Two judges—Steven Menashi and Michael Park, both appointed by Trump—dissented from Friday’s decision, arguing the court should have reconsidered the case.
Menashi accused the panel of deviating from precedent and criticized the trial judge for excluding key evidence and admitting “stale witness testimony” from another woman who accused Trump of assault during an unrelated encounter.
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The majority of the appellate court rejected that view. Four judges countered the dissent, writing that the appeal did not meet the high bar required for review, which is typically reserved for cases involving significant legal questions or conflicts in appellate precedent.
Judges Denny Chin and Susan Carney, who previously ruled against Trump in the December decision, issued a statement supporting the majority and directly refuting Menashi’s arguments.
“Even on his own terms, our dissenting colleague fails to explain why any purported error warrants a retrial or full court review,” they wrote.
Trump’s final chance to overturn the verdict lies with the Supreme Court. His team has indicated that he will ask the highest court to hear his appeal, but the court is not obligated to do so.
According to NBC News, in a statement Friday, a spokesperson for Trump described the lawsuit as a “Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax” and said the former president “will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he is focusing on his mission to Make America Great Again.”
