President Donald Trump’s legal team on Monday appealed a New York jury’s 2023 verdict that found him liable for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll decades ago to the Supreme Court.
Trump has denied Carroll’s accusation that he sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s, suggesting she first publicly brought up the matter in 2019 to help promote her book that year. After the president accused Carroll of lying and said she was not “my type,” the writer mounted a successful defamation lawsuit against him.
The president’s latest move to challenge the decision at the Supreme Court comes as he has hit a number of legal hurdles in contesting the jury’s verdict that he should be liable for sexual assault and defamation.
Trump lawyers argued in court filings Monday that “no physical or DNA evidence corroborates Carroll’s story” after initially filing an application to appeal the case at the Supreme Court in September. The appeal has not yet appeared on the Supreme Court’s public docket, and it remains unclear whether the justices will agree to hear the case, according to Axios.
“There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation,” his team wrote in a 33-page petition. Lawyers contended that allegations leading to the $5 million verdict were “propped up” by a “series of indefensible evidentiary rulings” that allowed Carroll’s lawyers to present “highly inflammatory propensity evidence” against him, including the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape and testimony from other women who accused Trump of sexual assault, which he denies.
WHERE THE REMAINING LEGAL CASES AGAINST TRUMP STAND
“Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th President, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself,” the petition reads.
The country’s highest court must intervene to reverse “facially implausible, politically motivated allegations,” it argues.