REPORT: Appeals court decides on Trump’s bid to challenge E. Jean Carroll judgment

June 13, 2025

From ABC News: A federal appeals court on Friday declined to rehear President Trump’s challenge to a $5 million civil judgment after a jury found him liable in 2023 for the battery and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.

A jury in Manhattan federal court found in 2023 that Trump attacked Carroll in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s and later defamed her when he denied her claim.

Trump had sought a hearing before the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit after a three-judge panel declined to overturn the judgment.

A divided court left intact the decision upholding the jury’s damage award.

The report explains that three judges on the court said they found “no manifest error by the district court” that would warrant additional review, but Judge Steven Menashi, a Trump appointee, said the district court should have allowed the defense to present evidence that Trump believed Carroll’s lawsuit “had been concocted by his political opposition — and therefore that he was not speaking with actual malice.”

Trump, who has emphatically denied the allegations since Carroll brought them up in 2019, has also separately appealed the $83 million judgement awarded to Carroll for her ‘defamation’ claim.

A federal appeals court on Friday declined to rehear President Trump’s challenge to a $5 million civil judgment after a jury found him liable in 2023 for the battery and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.

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— ABC News (@ABC) June 13, 2025