Writer E. Jean Carroll took a victory lap after President Donald Trump was forced, finally, to pay her millions of dollars for sexual abuse and defamation after years of legal wrangling.
A jury had found Trump civilly liable in 2023 for sexually abusing Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s and then defaming her by calling her accusations a “Hoax and a lie.”
The money was placed in a court-supervised account while Trump appealed the verdict, eventually growing to $5.62 million as of last week, The New York Times reported.
The president’s appeals were exhausted last month when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, but Trump’s team still tried—and failed—to convince the lower court to continue withholding the payment.
“The Eagle has landed,” Carroll wrote on X.com alongside a screenshot of the New York Times article reporting the funds had been released.
Her post quoted astronaut Neil Armstrong’s famous first words back to NASA mission control after he and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in 1969.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told the Times in a statement that she and her client were “pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.”
Aaron Harison, a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team, provided the paper with a recycled statement, claiming, “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.”
The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
The jury verdict in the case was unanimous, as was the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the matter.
Trump has nevertheless denied knowing Carroll or abusing her.
He had also tried unsuccessfully to argue that his comments about her were made as part of his official duties as president, even though he was out of office when he called the case a “complete con job” in an October 2022 Truth Social post.
On July 8, federal district Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a ruling saying Trump had been “stalling this case for years,” and that since the Supreme Court had decided not to grant review, it was time for the president to “pay the judgment.”
The president’s team tried yet again to appeal that order to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, but the money was disbursed to Carroll last week, the Times reported.
After the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Trump ranted on Truth Social that the case was “really against the United States of America, and all it stands for,” and said he would “continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me.”
His Department of Justice is reportedly investigating Carroll, along with a nonprofit that helped fund her legal expenses.
Carroll sued Trump in 2019 and then again in 2022 for defamation.
In an unusual move, the 2022 lawsuit went to trial first and resulted in the $5 million verdict. The 2019 case went to trial second and resulted in an $83 million verdict, which the president is still appealing. With interest, that judgment has ballooned to more than $100 million.
