Judge orders immediate release of $5 million Trump owes E. Jean Carroll in sex abuse case

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on Jul 8, 2026

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NEW YORK — A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday ordered the immediate release of more than $5 million owed to E. Jean Carroll by Donald Trump despite the president’s eleventh-hour bid to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to delay the payout once again.

Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order directing that the money be disbursed from a court-controlled account came a week after the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s appeal of the 2023 verdict that found him liable for sexual assault and defamation.

Carroll’s legal team did not immediately comment. Moments after the order came down, Trump’s lawyers filed a notice of appeal.

Following a weekslong civil trial in the spring of 2023, Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll inside a Midtown department store in 1996 and defaming her as a mentally unstable liar decades later.

Jurors heard extensive testimony about the violent attack from Carroll, a bestselling author and former TV host, from friends she confided in about the assault, and from other women who alleged Trump had sexually assaulted them in similar incidents.

After the verdict, the damages were deposited in a court-controlled account, where they remained as Trump petitioned one judge after another to overturn the verdict. After accruing interest, the sum is now closer to $6 million, according to court papers.

Trump has separately been ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million for additional instances of defamation, which were central to the original lawsuit she filed against him in 2019 and decided separately from the sexual abuse case. He is similarly appealing that outcome, but it hasn’t reached the Supreme Court.

The president fought the outcomes of Carroll’s cases vigorously.

His lawyers had agreed that if and when he had exhausted his options, the money could be released. Those efforts fell flat before Kaplan, New York’s 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and most recently, the Supreme Court. None of the high court justices, three of whom were installed by Trump, dissented.

In papers filed in Manhattan Federal Court under the wire before midnight Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys insisted he hadn’t reached the end of the line. They said that he had asked the nation’s highest court to reconsider its recent decision and that the money could not be distributed until he got an answer.

The two suits Carroll brought against Trump were the only cases among the four that went to trial between his presidencies that saw him meaningfully held to account.

His criminal conviction for paying out hush money before the 2016 election amounted to no punishment, with the sentencing falling just 10 days before his return to power.

Trump beat back a half-billion-dollar judgment on appeal in a civil case brought by the New York attorney general, in which he and his adult sons and top Trump Organization executives were found liable for lying about his net worth by billions of dollars to enrich themselves.

Trump also faced serious federal charges in Miami and Washington, D.C., alleging he stole and hoarded classified documents impacting national security at his Florida resort and plotted to undo President Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020. Those cases were ultimately dismissed ahead of Trump’s return to the White House.

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