BREAKING: FINAL CAPITULATION! Trump ABANDONS his bid to claw back E. Jean Carroll’s $5.6 million payout after the court dismisses his appeal WITH PREJUDICE.
E. Jean Carroll has accomplished what practically no other person involved in litigation with Donald Trump has ever been able to do: finally get him to give up on fighting the court’s judgment.
After years of stalling, appealing, and demanding the impossible, Trump just quietly dropped his final legal fight against the $5.6 million he owes Carroll, and this time, he can never bring it back.
Trump agreed to dismiss his appeal "with prejudice," meaning the case is over for good, according to a September 25th order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
He also abandoned his bizarre demand that Carroll RETURN the money she'd already legally won. New York Daily News reporter Molly Crane-Newman called it a genuine first: "In what I believe is a first for my eyes, Trump withdraws his appeal fighting the payout of $5M in damages to E. Jean Carroll."
Let's remember exactly what this money represents. A 2023 jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s and for defaming her afterward, awarding her $5 million.
After the Supreme Court refused to even hear Trump's appeal back in June, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered the money finally released in July, delivering one of the more satisfying judicial smackdowns in recent memory: "In the last analysis, defendant has been stalling this case for years. It is time for him to 'do equity' and pay the judgment."
Trump's team, naturally, still couldn't resist framing this as victimhood, releasing a statement calling it part of "Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes," even as they were simultaneously agreeing to permanently drop the fight. Trump's lawyers had already sent $5,625,005.48, judgment plus interest, straight to Carroll's legal team back in July.
Trump kept trying anyway, asking the appeals court in July to either block the payout entirely or force Carroll to give the money back, arguing she'd publicly stated her intent to donate it and had even started a foundation to distribute the funds. The court finally forced his hand, ordering him earlier this month to declare whether his motion was moot. He folded a week before that deadline.
Of course, this isn't fully over. Trump is still separately asking the Supreme Court to take up his appeal of a much larger $83.3 million defamation verdict from a different jury, a request the justices are expected to consider this fall.
But for now, on this particular case, after years of delay tactics and legal gymnastics, Trump finally did something that must have had him stewing in anger and denial: he simply paid what he owed.
