Trump Wants Court To Force E. Jean Carroll To Return $5.6M He Paid Her For Sexual Assault Judgment

When it comes to magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll and her sexual assault and defamation cases against President Donald Trump, the president keeps trying to get rulings and judgements overturned, and lower courts, appellate courts and the Supreme Court affirming and reaffirming those verdicts. Yet, Trump continues to refuse to take “no” for an answer, which, of course, seems to be what got him in this mess in the first place.

Earlier this month, we reported that a federal judge ordered Trump to finally pay Carroll the $5.6 million he owes her after she successfully sued him for sexually assaulting her in the 1990s, citing the Supreme Court’s June 29 order, which denied Trump’s request for the court to review the case.

Well, now, Trump has paid Carroll those funds, but he wants the money back while his attorneys try again to persuade SCOTUS to review the case, once again. So, his legal team is seeking an emergency injunction that would force Carroll to return what she has already received while his long-shot of an appeal is pending.

From People:

The money, sent to Carroll from an escrow account overseen by the court, came three years after a federal jury found Trump, 80, liable in the case.  In ordering Trump to pay the $5.6 million, Judge Lewis Kaplan said that the president had spent years delaying the case despite repeated losses in court.

“Defendant has been stalling this case for years,” Judge Kaplan wrote in his ruling. “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.”

Kaplan also noted that the U.S. Supreme Court — including three justices appointed by Trump — declined to review the case “without dissent,” adding that “it is time” for the president to “pay the judgment.”

In documents filed with the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit on Monday, July 21, Carroll’s lawyers opposed Trump’s request for the injunction, writing that the request is “procedurally improper, substantively meritless, and yet another example of Defendant’s pattern of ‘slow-roll[ing] his defenses, asserting or inventing a new one each time his prior effort to delay the case fails.’”

“But rather than accept the reality that he had lost, [Trump] has engaged in a series of maneuvers trying desperately to forestall payment,” the lawyers for Carroll wrote.

Seriously, though, it can not be emphasized enough how many times Trump has unsuccessfully tried to overturn or force a review of both the nearly $6 million sexual assault judgment against him and the $83 million he has been ordered to pay Carroll for defaming her.

Here’s what we reported on that last year, before his first failed attempt to get SCOTUS to review the case:

For those who are unfamiliar with the case, in late 2022, Carroll filed a lawsuit against Trump, alleging that he sexually assaulted her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s and defamed her in 2019 when he denied the assault, claiming she made it up to boost sales of a book, and saying she isn’t even his type — because, you know, that’s exactly a thing a non-rapist would say, right along with “grab them by the p***y.”

The jury, of course, didn’t buy it, and Trump was found liable for the assault and ordered to pay the $5 million judgment against him. Last December, a federal appeals court affirmed the jury’s verdict, ruling the trial judge did not make errors that would warrant a new trial. Then, in June, Trump lost a bid to have the appeal reviewed by the full bench of judges.

Meanwhile, a different jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll for repeating his statements about her book in 2022 and ordered him to pay $83 million in damages. He also tried to appeal that ruling, and, in September, a federal appeals court panel affirmed the damages once again, finding it “reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts.”

Then came the appeal to SCOTUS, which failed, and now he wants to appeal that decision and, by extension, reverse the last judge’s ruling ordering him to pay.

It’s like the movie Inception, if instead of dreams, it was about legal appeals within legal appeals filed by a sitting president who just can’t stop reminding the world he’s an adjudicated rapist.

Sad.

SEE ALSO:

Trump Ordered To Pay Up $5M Settlement To E. Jean Carroll

SCOTUS Upholds E. Jean Carroll’s $5M Verdict Against Trump Again. He Just Doesn’t Get It, Does He?