A jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in 2023. It is now 2026, and she has just collected the money. Three years of appeals, delay tactics, and Supreme Court prayers later, $5,625,005.48 landed in Carroll's attorneys' accounts this week, and the only thing Trump's team had to say about it was that the whole thing was a Democrat-funded hoax.
The Money Finally Moves
According to court records reported by NBC News, the funds held in a court escrow account have been officially disbursed to Carroll's attorneys. The original jury award was $5 million. With interest accrued over three years of legal delay, the final figure came to $5,625,005.48. Call it the cost of running out the clock.
Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan confirmed the payment in a statement: "Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict." Short, clean, no gloating. The gloating is implied.
A spokesperson for Trump's legal team, meanwhile, issued a statement describing the outcome as a "Democrat-funded travesty" and a "Witch Hunt," and promised that "President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare." Paying $5.6 million dollars is apparently winning now. The bar has been lowered through the floor and into the earth's mantle.
How We Got Here
Carroll, a former magazine columnist who is now 82, accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. She went public with her allegations in 2019. Trump responded, per his established playbook, by publicly denying everything and insisting he didn't know who she was.
The defamation claim stems from a 2022 Truth Social post in which Trump denied her allegations. Carroll sued, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in 2023, and awarded her $5 million. Trump, rather than pay immediately, moved the money into a court-controlled escrow account while his legal team worked through every available appeals option.
As BBC News reports, Trump was still pushing for a delay as recently as last week, hoping the Supreme Court would agree to reconsider its decision not to hear his appeal. The Supreme Court said no. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan then ordered the funds released to Carroll. Trump's attorneys tried to block even that, arguing their client faced "unrecoverable loss" because Carroll had said she intended to give the money away.
The 'She'll Give It Away' Argument
This is worth sitting with for a moment. Trump's legal team went to court and argued, with straight faces, that Carroll should not be allowed to collect her legally awarded damages because she might be too generous with them. This was their position. This is what they filed.
NBC News reports that Carroll's attorneys fired back by clarifying the record: her public comments about donating the money referred to a separate $83 million defamation judgment she won against Trump in a related case, not this one. As for this $5.6 million, Carroll plans to use it to fund her retirement and will park it in an interest-bearing account at least until Trump's separate Supreme Court bid in the $83 million case is resolved.
So to recap: Carroll is not giving this money away. She is saving it for retirement. She is 82. Trump's legal team burned court time trying to stop an 82-year-old woman from putting her jury award into a savings account.
The Bigger Number Looming in the Background
This $5.6 million is not the only judgment Carroll holds against Trump. In a separate, related defamation case, a jury awarded her $83 million. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to hear his appeal of that case as well.
The Supreme Court has not yet acted on that request. If the court declines again, the same slow-motion collection process may begin all over again, with the same press releases about witch hunts and the same motions about unrecoverable losses, and the same eventual disbursement years down the line. The machinery grinds forward whether Trump likes it or not.
A representative from Trump's legal team declined to comment to BBC News on the actual payment itself. Just on the witch hunt part. The payment, apparently, speaks for itself.
Three Years Is a Long Time to Hold Someone's Money
The original verdict came down in 2023. Carroll has been waiting over three years to see a single dollar of it. During that time, Trump lost the presidency, won it back, returned to the White House, and continued to have his legal team describe every accountability mechanism in American law as an orchestrated partisan attack.
The appeals process in American civil litigation exists for legitimate reasons. Nobody disputes that. But the gap between "pursuing a legitimate appeal" and "running every available procedural clock until a jury's verdict becomes a distant memory" has never been more visible than in cases involving this particular defendant. Three years. For a verdict that has now survived every level of appeal up to and including the Supreme Court.
The Dingo Take
Here is what actually happened: a jury of Americans heard the evidence, deliberated, and found the current President of the United States liable for sexually abusing a woman in a department store dressing room. That jury awarded her $5 million. Three years later, after every appeal failed, after the Supreme Court twice declined to get involved, after Trump's lawyers tried to argue that paying a judgment to a retiree constituted irreparable harm, the money moved. The system worked. Slowly, grinding against every effort to stop it, but it worked.
And the response from the Trump camp was to declare victory. Not ironic victory, not dark-humor victory, actual stated victory. "President Trump will keep winning." $5.6 million to a woman a jury found you sexually abused is winning. You have to admire the commitment to the bit, even if the bit is completely unhinged.
Carroll is 82 years old. She spent years being publicly called a liar by the most powerful man in the country. She went through the legal system anyway, won at every step, and is now using the proceeds to fund her retirement. Trump's team is already lining up the same arguments for the $83 million case. So we'll do this all again. Set your calendars for approximately 2029.
