Donald Trump has formally surrendered his fight over the $5 million E. Jean Carroll verdict, announcing via court filing that he will no longer contest the payout. The money was already gone. He lost every single appeal he filed to stop it. His spokesperson called this winning.
What Actually Happened, Step by Step
The Guardian reports that Trump's withdrawal was revealed Tuesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which issued a mandate stating the appeal is dismissed with prejudice and Trump's motion for a stay is withdrawn. Let that phrase sink in: dismissed with prejudice. That is the legal equivalent of the court stamping DONE on the whole thing in red ink.
The $5 million verdict came out of Carroll's 2023 civil trial, in which a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Trump spent the next two-plus years trying every available legal lever to avoid paying it. He failed at the district court level. He failed at the circuit court level. The Supreme Court declined to touch it. Twice. The money, which had grown to $5.8 million with accrued interest, was released on July 9.
The Timeline of a Very Determined Loser
Here is the sequence of events, because it is genuinely remarkable. In June, the Supreme Court declined to review Trump's appeal. Manhattan federal judge Lewis Kaplan immediately ordered the funds disbursed. Within an hour, Trump ran to the Second Circuit asking for a stay so he could keep fighting. The Second Circuit said no. The money left the building on July 9.
In August, the Supreme Court rejected Trump's rehearing request. That was the second time the high court told him to go away. This week's filing, as The Guardian notes, was pure formality at that point, a procedural acknowledgment of something that had already been decided, repeatedly, by every court he tried. Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers, put it plainly: "There's absolutely no way Trump can go after Carroll for this five million plus dollars."
The Statement His Team Put Out
A spokesperson for Trump's legal team responded to requests for comment with the following: "The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes. President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again."
To summarize: a jury found him liable. Every court he appealed to rejected him. The Supreme Court turned him away twice. The money is gone. He is currently asking the Supreme Court to throw out an entirely separate $83 million judgment Carroll won against him in January 2024. The statement used the word "winning." Unironically. Twice.
The $83 Million Problem Waiting in the Wings
If you thought $5 million was the whole Carroll story, you have missed the sequel. The Guardian reports that Trump is now asking the Supreme Court to throw out a second verdict, this one for $83 million, awarded after Carroll's January 2024 civil trial for defamation. That case centered on Trump's continued public attacks on Carroll after the first verdict.
So the pattern here is: Trump loses a case, publicly attacks the person who beat him, gets sued again for the attacks, loses that case too, then tries to get the Supreme Court to bail him out. It is not a legal strategy so much as a personality disorder with filing fees attached.
Why This Keeps Mattering
This case has dragged on long enough that it is tempting to file it under Old News and move on. Do not do that. The 2023 jury verdict finding a sitting former president liable for sexual abuse was not a minor event. The subsequent years of appeals, delays, and procedural combat were a deliberate attempt to use the complexity and expense of the legal system to grind down accountability until everyone got too bored to care.
It did not work this time. Carroll got her $5.8 million. The courts held. The process, creaky and slow as it is, produced an outcome. That is not a small thing in the current moment, when the word "lawfare" gets deployed by powerful people every time a court rules against them and expects us to believe the problem is the court.
The Dingo Take
Trump's team called this winning. Read that sentence again. The man spent two years filing appeals, running to the Second Circuit within literal minutes of a disbursement order, begging the Supreme Court twice, and the result was: Carroll got $5.8 million and he got a mandate stamped WITHDRAWN. His own lawyers stipulated to the dismissal. That is not winning. That is asking the referee to eject you from the game so you do not have to watch the final score go up.
The spokesperson's statement is worth preserving as a historical artifact. When your client has lost at every level of the federal judiciary, when the Supreme Court has rejected him twice, when the money is sitting in E. Jean Carroll's account earning interest while you type, and you still reach for "witch hunt" and "hoax" and "winning" — that is not spin. That is a dissociation from observable reality so complete it should concern the people around him.
And meanwhile the $83 million case is sitting at the Supreme Court, waiting. Trump apparently learned nothing from this experience except that he should immediately start the same process all over again with a bigger number. Carroll's legal team, at this point, probably has his filing templates bookmarked.
Comments