A federal judge in New York ordered on Wednesday that nearly $5.8 million be released from a court-controlled account to writer E. Jean Carroll, enforcing a 2023 civil verdict that found President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing her in the mid-1990s and later defaming her. The sum, which includes three years of accrued interest on the original $5 million award, had been held in escrow while Trump exhausted his appeals. Within an hour of the ruling, the president’s attorneys lodged a notice of appeal with the federal appeals court in Manhattan and separately petitioned the Supreme Court to rehear the case, a move that legal observers in the United States describe as a long-shot attempt to keep the funds frozen.

Trump’s legal team argued in court filings that releasing the money would cause “irreparable harm” because Carroll has stated she intends to give it away, making recovery unlikely if the verdict were later overturned. A spokesman for the president’s lawyers characterised the litigation as a “Democrat-funded travesty” and part of a broader “witch hunt,” language that echoes Trump’s public statements. Carroll’s attorneys, by contrast, told the court that their 82-year-old client had waited more than three years for payment and that Trump was simply stalling. Judge Lewis Kaplan, in his order, noted that the Supreme Court had already declined to hear the appeal without any recorded dissent, and that the president could sue to recover the money in the “highly unlikely” event the verdict was vacated.

The disbursement order marks the latest turn in a legal saga that began when Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, accused Trump of attacking her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room around 1996. A jury in May 2023 found him liable for sexual abuse and for defaming her in a 2022 social media post, though it did not find that he had committed rape. A second jury in January 2024 awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million for defamatory statements Trump made in 2019 while serving his first presidential term. That separate judgment is also under appeal, with Trump’s lawyers asserting that his denials were official acts entitled to presidential immunity.

Viewed from Washington, the parallel appeals form part of a sustained legal strategy to delay enforcement of both verdicts. The Supreme Court rarely grants rehearing after denying a petition for certiorari, and the nine justices — including three appointed by Trump — noted no dissents when they turned away the case on 29 June. The president’s latest rehearing petition contends that the forthcoming appeal in the $83.3 million case could raise immunity questions that bear on the $5 million verdict. The federal appeals court in Manhattan is now expected to rule on the emergency motion to block the payout, while the Supreme Court considers whether to revisit its earlier decision.