US3 min(s) read
Published 16:23 29 Jun 2026 GMT
The US Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal from President Donald Trump to have his sexual assault and defamation ruling reviewed.
A New York court found in favor of E. Jean Carroll in 2023, awarding the former journalist $5m in damages.
She claimed that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and then subsequently claimed that the case was a hoax on social media.
The president has always denied the allegations against him and has made claims about the judge who presided over the civil suit.
He claims that the New York judge allowed evidence to be admitted that affected the jury’s perception of him.
However, a federal appeals court also found against Trump last year, meaning that no new trial would be needed.
That’s when Trump got the Supreme Court involved, but now that has also gone against him.
In accordance with usual procedure, no further information was given about why the court didn’t take up the case.
This does mean that Trump has now exhausted all avenues available to him to appeal this ruling, meaning that he will now have to pay Carroll the money.
In a statement, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said that the decision ‘affirms once and for all the jury's unanimous verdict that President Donald J Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E Jean Carroll’.
She added: "His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today's ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions.”
Before today, Carroll’s camp had not commented on Trump’s decision to continue appealing the case to the very top level.
A spokesperson for Donald Trump’s legal team hit back with a statement of their own.
They said: "The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes,
"President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again."
Trump’s lawyers had argued that the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape of Trump in which he made claims that he had kissed and groped women should not have been allowed to be shown to jurors.
The comments made by Trump after the ruling also led to another case of defamation, for which he was ordered to pay $83m.
His appeal against that ruling was dismissed in September.
The court, while upholding Carroll’s claim that Trump sexually assaulted and defamed her, rejected her claims that she was raped based upon the definition in New York’s penal code.
The jury found that Trump, 80, attacked Carroll, now 81, in the dressing room of a department store in New York in the mid-1990s.
After that claim was brought, Trump then made posts on his own Truth Social platform claiming that she had lied about the claims and that Carroll was ‘not [his] type’.
Those comments subsequently led to the defamation case.
