Writer E. Jean Carroll has once again asked the Supreme Court to reject President Donald Trump’s appeal of her $83.3 million defamation verdict, urging the justices not to “bail out this President.”
The court previously turned down Trump’s appeal in Carroll’s separate sexual abuse case in June. In a brief filed Friday, her lawyers told the justices to “do the same here.”
A federal jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in January 2024 over statements Trump made as president in 2019 denying her account of the abuse. A separate jury had found in 2023 that he sexually abused her in 1996 and awarded her $5 million. Trump has since abandoned his appeals of the 2023 verdict.
Government lawyers representing Trump argue in his petition that the ruling “wrongly eviscerates Presidential immunity,” which shields presidents from lawsuits over official acts. The petition says it is “the first case in our Nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a President for his conduct in office.” Trump has insisted he never sexually abused Carroll or even knew her.
Carroll’s lawyers counter that Trump gave up, or waived, that protection years ago by choosing to fight the case. The court should not “bail out this President from the consequences of his repeated litigation choices,” they wrote.
According to the brief, Trump said in a 2020 letter to a New York state court that Carroll was “free to pursue this action when the President is no longer in office” and that he was not “seeking to ‘escape accountability.’” He then fought the case for nearly three years before raising presidential immunity in December 2022, the brief says.
“No ordinary defendant would be forgiven waiver after waiver—and then waiver of any argument about the standard for waiver—over the course of years of litigation,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote.
They also argue that Trump’s attacks on Carroll fell outside a president’s official duties, which the Supreme Court has said immunity covers. Court records show that in June 2019, Trump accused Carroll of making up her story to sell a book and said: “people should pay dearly for such false accusations.”
“Wherever the ‘outer perimeter’ of a President’s responsibilities lies … surely what [Trump] inflicted on Ms. Carroll is beyond it,” the brief says.
The Justice Department filed a separate petition asking the justices to let the United States replace Trump as the defendant, SCOTUSblog reported. Carroll’s brief says the 1988 law that allows such a swap bars defamation claims against the government, so it would end the case.
The department backed the swap in 2020 but dropped it in 2023, writing that the jury’s sexual abuse finding “supports an inference that Mr. Trump was motivated by a ‘personal grievance,’” according to a letter attached to the brief. After Trump returned to the White House, the department certified in April 2025 that he had acted as part of his job, records attached to the brief show.
In July, Trump asked the justices to reconsider the sexual abuse case or hold it until they acted on this appeal, his rehearing petition shows. The court denied that request on Aug. 17, its docket shows.
“While this President may want this Court’s help, the Presidency does not need it,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote.