Supreme Court Issues Decision In President Trump’s Request To Review $5 Million Civil Judgment In E. Jean Carroll Case

The court on Monday turned down President Donald Trump’s request to reconsider the justices’ denial of review in a civil suit brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll, which yielded a $5 million verdict against the president.https://t.co/GyaONDPso6

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) August 17, 2026

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Carroll filed the lawsuit at the center of the dispute in 2022. She alleged that in 1996 Trump had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at a New York department store and then in 2022, after she went public with her assault allegations, defamed her.

After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld the jury’s verdict, Trump went to the Supreme Court. In a petition filed in November 2025, he argued that Carroll should not have been allowed to introduce testimony by other women who also alleged that Trump had assaulted them, as well as the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.

Carroll urged the justices to turn down Trump’s appeal. She argued that even if the introduction of the evidence was improper, it ultimately did not matter because the rest of her case was so strong.

Although the justices were initially slated to consider Trump’s original petition for review at their Feb. 20, 2026, conference, they put off doing so until their June 25 conference and denied it four days later.

Trump returned to the court on July 8, asking the justices to reconsider their decision to leave the 2nd Circuit’s decision in place. He contended that at his trial, Carroll’s lawyers had relied on statements that he had made while president. He argued that a second petition for review, which his lawyers filed on July 28 in a lawsuit by Carroll that yielded an $83 million award against Trump, “will present the issue of whether” those “statements constitute protected official acts, which they do.” And if the Supreme Court agrees, he said, then they should not have been introduced into evidence in the 2022 case either.

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JUST IN: The U.S. Supreme Court has DECLINED to take up President Trump’s last-ditch petition to RECONSIDER the $5M E. Jean Carroll verdict.

MSNOW: “Trump wanted them to reconsider there decision earlier this summer and they said, ‘no.’”

“Trump has already turned over $5M… pic.twitter.com/cy9hPhembM

— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) August 17, 2026

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The request the justices dispatched on Monday was always a long shot, since they rarely reconsider when asked. Still, it was another in a series of blows to the president’s efforts to contest Ms. Carroll’s claims and avoid the two separate monetary awards that juries have ordered him to pay related to Ms. Carroll’s allegations.

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