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US President Donald Trump and the Justice Department are asking the Supreme Court to overturn an $83 million (€71 million) defamation verdict won by writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexual assault.
Trump has long argued he cannot be sued over comments he made about Carroll during his first term where he disavowed knowing her and attacked her motivations for going public with her story in a recent memoir.
The Justice Department says the Westfall Act shields government employees from lawsuits over actions taken as part of their official duties, while Trump’s lawyers argued that presidential immunity shields him from the €71 million award because he made the statements while serving as president in 2019.
“Absent this Court’s intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office,” federal attorneys wrote. “That alone deserves this Court’s attention.”
“This 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,” the lawyers wrote.
Carroll testified twice before New York juries that Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the spring of 1996. The longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host first made the allegations public in a 2019 memoir.
She later sued Trump for defamation after he accused her of fabricating the allegations to boost book sales, saying he had never met her and that “she’s not my type.” Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
It’s the second time Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn damages awarded to Carroll. In June, the justices declined to hear his appeal of a separate $5 million (€4.3 million) verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
A Manhattan jury awarded her €71 million in damages in January 2024. Lower courts have so far rejected Trump’s appeals to overturn the verdict, though the New York-based appeals court split over the decision and agreed to delay that payout until the Supreme Court weighs in.
In 2023, another jury said Carroll was entitled to €4.3 million after concluding that Trump had subjected her to sexual abuse in the department store encounter and for defamation for remarks he had made after his first term ended, a judgment which has been paid.
Carroll’s lawyers have declined to comment on the latest Trump filing.