The United States Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear President Donald Trump’s appeal against a 2023 jury verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, leaving the $5 million judgment in place. The brief, unexplained order, issued without noted dissents, means the civil finding becomes final and the president must pay the damages awarded by a New York federal jury. The jury had concluded that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and later defamed her by calling her allegations a hoax, though it did not find him liable for rape as defined under New York criminal law.

Trump responded on his Truth Social platform by calling the case “fake” and a “weaponisation and lawfare case,” vowing to continue fighting. His legal team had argued to the high court that the trial judge improperly admitted “highly inflammatory” evidence, including the 2005 Access Hollywood recording in which Trump boasted about grabbing women, and testimony from two other women who accused him of sexual misconduct decades ago. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, stated that the decision “affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict” and ends Trump’s “quest to avoid accountability.” The president’s lawyers had framed the appeal as a matter of presidential distraction, contending that the case should not be allowed to proceed against a sitting president, though the verdict predated his return to the White House.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to review the case exhausts Trump’s legal options for the $5 million award. He had already deposited $5.5 million with the court, and Carroll is expected to receive the funds shortly. A separate defamation trial in 2024 resulted in an $83.3 million judgment against Trump for further statements attacking Carroll’s credibility; that appeal is still pending before a federal appeals court and has not yet reached the Supreme Court. Separately, the US Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into whether Carroll committed perjury in depositions related to her civil suits, focusing on her statements about outside funding for her legal fees—a move that critics in Washington describe as a retaliatory use of prosecutorial power.

Carroll first made her allegations in a 2019 memoir, asserting that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room around 1996. Trump has consistently denied the encounter, claiming he never met her except in a receiving line. The case proceeded under a New York state law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for civil sexual assault claims. Viewed from European capitals, the Supreme Court’s action forms part of a broader pattern of rulings on the same day that both constrained and expanded presidential authority: the court separately blocked Trump’s attempt to fire a Federal Reserve governor while also granting him sweeping power to remove commissioners of independent agencies. The Carroll dossier remains active, with the $83.3 million defamation appeal and the criminal probe into the writer both continuing.