‘The Eagle Has Landed’: E. Jean Carroll Rejoices After Trump Finally Pays $5.6 Million Judgment
Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP Photo
President Donald Trump has finally paid E. Jean Carroll the $5.6 million judgment he owes her for one of the two lawsuits she filed against him, after exhausting his appeals.
The cases arose from Carroll’s allegations in a 2019 article that Trump had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump vociferously denied the accusations and launched a series of attacks on Carroll, all leading to her suing him for defamation and a separate civil claim for the alleged rape. The ex-president’s deposition included several shocking moments, including one where Trump — who had been adamant that Carroll was “not my type” — mistook a photo of her for his second wife, Marla Maples.
In May 2023, a New York jury found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, and awarded $5 million in damages.
Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan presided over both trials, ruling from the outset that the jury’s verdict finding Trump liable would be binding in the second proceeding.
The only matter at issue in the second trial was the amount of damages, and Carroll’s legal team emphasized how Trump had continued to attack their client in the aftermath of that last verdict — including aggressively bashing her throughout the trial.
Trump briefly took the stand in his defense, after getting a scolding from the judge for speaking over his own attorneys and disrupting the courtroom. Judge Kaplan ended up striking most of Trump’s comments from the record because they violated his ruling to not attempt to re-litigate the previous trial’s verdict.
The jury clobbered Trump in January 2024, finding him liable for defaming Carroll and awarding her $83.3 million, comprised of compensatory damages of $7.3 million for emotional harm and $11 million in “reputational repair,” plus $65 million in punitive damages.
Since then, Trump has made numerous unsuccessful attempts to appeal both verdicts, going all the way to the Supreme Court, which denied his petition for a writ of certiorari in late June without issuing a written opinion. With the nation’s highest court refusing to hear his appeal, Carroll’s lawyers filed a motion to be able to disburse the funds, which Trump had deposited in an escrow account after the verdict in 2023. The initial $5 million has collected several hundred thousand dollars in interest since that time, which Kaplan ordered must be paid to Carroll as well.
On July 8, Trump filed another motion attempting to fight the disbursement of funds and Kaplan once again rejected his motion that same day as making a “wrongheaded claim,” writing that the “plain language” of the court’s previous orders directed the money to be paid to Carroll upon a final judgment, and the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari was indeed final.
“It is abundantly clear that applications for rehearing of denials of certiorari are permitted only in very narrow circumstances,” wrote Kaplan. “Few are filed, and successful filings are extremely rare birds.”
The judge admonished Trump for “stalling this case for years” and declared it was time to pay the damages:
A jury unanimously concluded that he sexually abused and defamed plaintiff and awarded her damages accordingly. The judgment on that verdict has been upheld on appeal. En banc rehearing has been denied. The Supreme Court has denied certiorari without dissent. It is time for him to “do equity” and pay the judgment.
The court docket entry for this case shows a new entry on Tuesday indicating that $5,625,005.48 had been paid to Carroll’s law firm:
CASHIERS OFFICE CRIS DISBURSEMENT as per 241 Order on Motion for Disbursement of Funds, dated 07/08/2026, from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, on 07/09/2026 disbursed to pay KAPLAN MARTIN LLP $5,625,005.48 EFT No. 2105280 dated 07/13/2026.(bwi)
Carroll wrote a triumphant post on her Instagram page sharing a screenshot of The New York Times article about the payment. In the caption, she thanked both her legal team and even a tongue-in-cheek “special thanks” for Alina Habba, who represented Trump and had found herself crosswise with the judge on multiple occasions.
View this post on Instagram
Carroll also shared the news on her X account, captioning the tweet, “The Eagle has landed.”
This article has been updated with additional information.
New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!
Comments
↓ Scroll down for comments ↓