Trump to ask Supreme Court to toss E. Jean Carroll sex-abuse verdict

Zoe Tillman, Bloomberg News on Sep 3, 2025

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says he will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation judgment against him in New York writer E. Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit.

Trump’s attorneys asked the justices to extend the deadline for him to formally ask the high court to hear the case, according to a new filing. The petition would be due Sept. 11, but his legal team wants until Nov. 10.

Trump was found liable by a Manhattan jury in May 2023 for sexually assaulting Carroll and then defaming her by calling her a liar, following a trial in which he declined to testify. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages.

In December, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s challenges, including arguments that jurors shouldn’t have heard the so-called Access Hollywood tape or testimony from another woman who also accused him of sexual assault. A majority of the circuit’s active judges voted in June against reconsidering that decision.

“President Trump intends to seek review by this court of significant issues arising from the Second Circuit’s erroneous decision,” his lawyers wrote in a filing dated Aug. 27 but wasn’t made publicly available by the Supreme Court until this week.

Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that they “do not believe that President Trump will be able to present any legal issues in the Carroll cases that merit review by the United States Supreme Court.”

Trump is represented by private attorneys in the litigation, not the Justice Department. His lawyers said they needed more time to prepare their Supreme Court petition because of conflicts with deadlines in other cases.

Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, went public in 2019 with her claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s. She sued in 2022 under a New York law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on assault claims that are decades old.

Trump is also appealing a New York jury’s $83.3 million award levied against him in a different defamation suit Carroll filed against the president, which focused on statements he made about her from the White House in 2019 after she announced her accusations.

Trump’s lawyers argued in their Supreme Court extension request that they were “improperly” prevented from pressing certain arguments against Carroll’s other case that resulted in the $83 million award.

Trump’s deadline delay ask will go to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles such requests from cases in the 2nd Circuit. Extension requests are routinely granted by the court.

The case is Trump v. Carroll, 25A250, U.S. Supreme Court.

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(With assistance from Erik Larson and Patricia Hurtado.)

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