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- President Donald Trump won't pay an $83 million defamation award to E. Jean Carroll for now, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday.
- The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to the request made by one of Trump's lawyers.
- The lawyer claimed a "fair prospect" of the Supreme Court favoring Trump in his appeal.
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump won't have to pay an $83 million defamation award to a longtime advice columnist until the Supreme Court gets a chance to review the case or reject an appeal, according to a court entry Tuesday.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to a request by one of Trump's lawyers that it let the president delay the payment to E. Jean Carroll, though it required that Trump post a $7.4 million bond to cover any additional interest costs, a request Carroll's attorney had made.
The appeals court late last month refused Trump's request for a rare meeting of the full 2nd Circuit to hear an appeal of a three-judge panel's affirmance of the January 2024 verdict.
Afterward, Trump attorney Justin D. Smith asked the 2nd Circuit to stay the effect of its decision upholding the award so that Trump would not be forced to pay the judgment before the high court has a chance to consider an appeal.
Smith said last week there was a "fair prospect" that the Supreme Court would find in favor of Trump, who has called Carroll's claims, first made publicly in 2019, that she was sexually attacked by Trump in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in spring 1996, a "made-up scam."
The $83 million award to Carroll, 82, came from a jury that briefly heard Trump testify and observed his animated behavior for several days.
In upholding the verdict, a 2nd Circuit panel wrote last September that Trump continued his attacks against Carroll for at least five years, making them "more extreme and frequent as the trial approached."
"He also continued these same attacks during the trial itself," the appeals court said. "In one such statement, issued two days into the trial, Trump proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll 'a thousand times.'"
The jury had been instructed to accept the findings of a jury that, in May 2023, awarded Carroll $5 million after concluding Trump sexually abused her in the department store and then defamed her after she published her account of it in a 2019 memoir.
Trump is challenging the $83 million award on several grounds, asserting "absolute immunity" for comments he made while president, as he disavowed any knowledge of Carroll and attacked her motivations, saying they were politically driven or arose from a desire to promote her memoir.
