The writer E Jean Carroll has collected more than 5.6 million dollars (£4.18 million) that a jury awarded in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against US President Donald Trump, court records and her lawyers said.
The payment, representing the five million dollar jury award, plus interest, was made on Monday from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict, according to court records. Ms Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the payment on Tuesday.
“We are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment,” Ms Kaplan said in a statement.
Mr Trump’s lawyers have vowed to continue appealing.
Mr Trump deposited the money in an escrow account shortly after the jury ruled against him. The US Supreme Court recently let the civil verdict stand, clearing the way for Judge Lewis A Kaplan to release the money.
Mr Trump’s lawyers then sought but were denied an emergency order to block the payment. The one-sentence denial set no conditions on how Ms Carroll may use the money. Her lawyers have said in court papers that she plans to put it in a retirement account.
Mr Trump’s lawyers have since filed another appeal seeking to stop or reverse the payment.
The jury found Mr Trump attacked Ms Carroll in 1996 in a New York luxury department store dressing room and defamed her after she told the story publicly in a memoir in 2019, during his first term as president.
Mr Trump insisted nothing sexual happened between him and Ms Carroll, now 82, a former advice columnist.
Mr Trump claimed she was “totally lying” and “not my type” in a 2019 interview. He said he did not know her, dismissing a 1987 photo of them and their then-spouses at a party as inconsequential, and he accused her of harbouring political motives and trying to sell books at his expense.
Mr Trump did not attend the trial, where Ms Carroll gave evidence that their flirtatious and friendly chance encounter at the department store turned violent.
Ms Carroll sued Mr Trump after New York changed its laws to give sexual abuse survivors a fresh chance to sue over attacks that happened in the distant past.
Mr Trump is also appealing against 83 million dollars (£61.9 million) in defamation compensation granted to Ms Carroll by a separate Manhattan jury after a 2024 trial where Mr Trump briefly gave evidence.
Ms Carroll has waived her right to anonymity.