Donald Trump’s latest effort to reverse his court-ordered $83.3 million payout to the writer E. Jean Carroll was rejected Thursday, leaving him on the hook for the damages she won in her defamation trial against him.
The ruling comes in response to Trump’s requests for a new trial and a reduced judgment against him in Carroll’s defamation case, which she brought after Trump lied about sexually assaulting her.
“Mr. Trump’s argument is entirely without merit both as a matter of law and as a
matter of fact for all of the reasons articulated in Ms. Carroll’s memorandum of law in opposition to his motion,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his ruling against Trump, who has made several attempts to reduce or appeal the January judgment against him.
Kaplan shot down the claims from the former president that the payout was excessive, pointing to the reach of his defamatory statements about Carroll.
“Mr. Trump’s malicious and unceasing attacks on Ms. Carroll were disseminated to more than 100 million people,” he wrote (emphasis original). “They included public threats and personal attacks, and they endangered Ms. Carroll’s health and safety. The jury was entitled to conclude that Mr. Trump derailed the career, reputation, and emotional well-being of one of America’s most successful and prominent advice columnists and authors.”
Kaplan also dismissed Trump’s claims that the jury had been “erroneously instructed” and that evidence was left out of the trial.
A representative for Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A jury awarded Carroll the damages in January after, determining that the former president defamed her in 2019 when he denied her allegations that he sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. The awarded payout broke down to $7.3 million in emotional damages, $11 million in reputation-related damages and $65 million in punitive damages.
A jury found Trump guilty of sexually assaulting Carroll in a separate trial last year and awarded her $5 million in damages.