Trump wants to delay, E. Jean Carroll wants the sentence to be paid

The writer E. Jean Carroll is seeking an immediate release of nearly $5.8 million she owes in a civil jury verdict that arrested President Donald Trump for sexual assault and defamation, according to a new lawsuit filed by her lawyers.

But Trump wants to delay that so he can ask the Supreme Court to review its refusal Monday to hear his request, according to the filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Such a request is rarely accepted.

And Carroll flatly rejects the suggestion that he allow any further delay in his payment.

“This is the end of the line,” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote in a filing Tuesday night with District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, asking her to order the release of funds set aside by Trump to satisfy the May 2023 jury verdict.

“To date, Carroll has agreed to numerous requests by the Defendant to delay payment owed to him,” wrote Kaplan, who is not related to the judge. “Given the extraordinary lengths he has taken to avoid such payments and that each attempt has been categorically denied, that cooperation ends today.”

“It’s time for him to pay Carroll.”

The filing cites previous statements by Judge Kaplan, who said Trump has engaged in impeachment tactics that suggest he has a “strong desire to delay” the case, as well as the related Carroll case.

“The request for a rehearing may not be successful,” Kaplan wrote. “Requiring Carroll to endure further delay while Defendant seeks a rehearing would be unfair and undermine the public interest.”

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said, “The American people stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-sponsored Carroll Hoaxes.”

“President Trump will continue to win against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again,” said the spokesman, who asked not to be named.

Judge Kaplan on Wednesday ordered Trump’s lawyers to respond by next Tuesday to Carroll’s request to have the award removed from him.

The judge in the case found that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s in the dressing room of a Manhattan store and that he had humiliated her by denying her allegations when she came forward to them two decades later.

The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Since Trump deposited the money in court to protect the judgment pending his trial, that money has earned nearly $800,000 in interest that Carroll is entitled to.

The $5 million decision is considered a liability in Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure report, made public Tuesday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

The same report notes in a separate case another Manhattan federal court judge’s $83.3 million award to Carroll from Trump for defamation when he denied sexually assaulting her. That award, which Trump continues to appeal, is related to separate statements the president made about Carroll and those that led to a $5 million judgment in another case.

Trump unsuccessfully asked both Judge Kaplan and the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the $5 million ruling.

And on Monday, the Supreme Court said it would not rule on Trump’s decision in the case.

No dissent was noted in that ruling from any of the nine justices — three of whom were appointed by Trump during his first term in the White House.

Roberta Kaplan, in a new filing, said shortly after the Supreme Court denial, Trump wrote a Truth Social post “continuing his attack on Carroll.”

Trump wrote, “Surprisingly, the Supreme Court refused to ‘review’ the Fraud Case brought against me by a woman I’ve never met (a decades-old line of celebrity photos, posing with her husband, doesn’t count!).”

Within minutes of the post, Kaplan wrote, Trump’s attorneys contacted Carroll’s attorneys to ask if he would agree to continue delaying the award so the president could “ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its denial of certiorari.”

Certiorari is a term for the Supreme Court to review a case from a lower court.

Carroll’s lawyers told Trump’s team that Judge Kaplan’s previous order ordered that the award be issued “immediately upon the denial of the petition for certiorari,” the filing said.

Trump’s attorney then “clarified that he was asking Carroll to agree to a ‘new stay or continued discharge'” of the payment, Roberta Kaplan wrote.

Kaplan said he told Trump’s attorney that Carroll had not agreed to delay the release of the funds.

He also asked if Trump would agree to say that the money should be released. Trump’s attorney responded that the president could not answer that question before Thursday, according to the filing.

Kaplan wrote that there was “no valid or equitable reason” to delay awarding Carroll money “based on a mere doctrine subject to retrial” by the Supreme Court.

He noted that the high court grants guarantees in “only a few cases each year.”

“And rehearsing is an extraordinary remedy, given only in minor cases,” he wrote.

“There is no reason to believe that the Supreme Court will allow us here.”