Drama hit the nation’s highest court this week as writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers shot down Donald Trump’s latest Supreme Court gambit, urging the justices to throw out Trump’s latest push to nix the blockbuster verdict from her second defamation trial.
The stakes? Trump’s civil debt to Carroll now hovers near a jaw-dropping $88 million, stemming from not one, but two bombshell juries siding with the writer—first in 2023, awarding Carroll $5 million over sexual assault and defamation, then a staggering $83.3 million slapped on Trump in January 2024 for post-verdict insults.
E. Jean Carroll leaves the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in New York City on Jan. 25, 2024, after proceedings ended for the day in the defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump. Carroll is suing Donald Trump for assailing her character and credibility after she accused him of sexual assault. Another jury has already held that Trump owes Carroll at least $5 million.
Repeated efforts by Trump to dodge liability—such as claiming presidential immunity—have been swatted away by courts up and down the ranks. Not taking no for an answer, Trump’s latest Supreme salvo ditched presidential immunity and instead blasted the trial and appellate judges for letting jurors hear accounts from other women claiming sexual assault by Trump. His camp insists that testimony doomed him to an unfair trial.
But Carroll’s attorneys aren’t buying it. Their new brief—filed Wednesday—brands Trump’s claims as empty. They say federal rules made it perfectly legal for those women’s stories to be aired and the court had every right to let the jury consider them. The Second Circuit already ruled that, testimony or not, the evidence didn’t sway the jury’s final call, meaning Trump’s $88 million problem would stick either way.
Jun. 29, 2005; Nyack, NY, USA; E. Jean Carroll, photographed at the Old Fashioned Restaurant and Pub, is an Elle Magazine columnist as well as the founder of the match making website GreatBoyfriends.com; Mandatory credit: Tom Nycz-USA TODAY NETWORK
In a candid June 2025 interview with Newsweek, Carroll doubled down on her faith in America’s courts, telling readers she believes judges are democracy’s guardians—and rallying women to protest Trump with her trademark fire: “Women have the power. We just have to realize it. We hold, as they say, the purse strings.”
Trump’s lead lawyer, Justin D. Smith of St. Louis, fired back to the Associated Press in November 2025, branding Carroll’s suit a “politically motivated hoax,” and touting Trump’s repeated, unequivocal denials. Smith hammered their argument again, saying there’s no DNA or physical evidence, no witnesses, no video, no police reports—calling the allegations pure fiction.
All eyes now turn to the Supreme Court, where case 25-573 has entered the spotlight, joining a swirling docket of presidential controversies. Court-watchers are bracing for what could be another seismic twist in Trump’s legal saga.
