An appeal to the Supreme Court for more delay would be futile.
An update from my post yesterday regarding the state of play in the Carroll v. Trump litigation.
As related there, Judge Lewis Kaplan on Wednesday ordered that President Trump pay journalist E. Jean Carroll the judgment amount she won in the first trial – at which the jury awarded her a total of $5 million based on finding Trump liable for sexual assault ($2 million) and one instance of defamation ($3 million). After the 2023 trial, Trump had to deposit the judgment amount in an escrow account, with accruing interest, while he pursued his appeal. On Wednesday, Judge Kaplan issued two orders: one releasing the account funds to Carroll, and a second explaining why he was doing so.
Kaplan concluded that Trump “has been stalling this case for years,” and that with a jury having “unanimously concluded that he sexually abused and defamed plaintiff and awarded her damages accordingly,” and with that judgment having been upheld on appeal, it was time for Trump to “‘do equity’ and pay the judgment.”
Trump has been seeking to delay the payment because he has filed a longshot motion for the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear his appeal (which the Second Circuit rejected in 2024). Kaplan, however, noted that in the agreement between the parties, and endorsed by the court, which allowed Trump to pay the funds into the account rather than to Carroll while the appeal was pending, Trump explicitly agreed that he would pay at such time as there was “a denial of a timely filed petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court (if any) in connection with the Appeal.”
Nearly two weeks ago, on June 29, the Supreme Court denied Trump’s writ of certiorari. That triggered the obligation to pay. Trump’s reconsideration motion does not extend the time; indeed, what he is asking the justices to reconsider is the very ruling that the payment agreement anticipated. And, as Kaplan elaborates, no justice dissented from the Court’s refusal to hear the appeal.
Trump nevertheless tried to appeal Kaplan’s order that Carroll be paid to the Second Circuit. The circuit promptly denied that motion in a curt order.
It is not clear whether Trump is going to try to appeal to the Supreme Court. Doing so would be foolish since the justices are simply not going to get involved, and the political fallout would be to draw more attention to the sexual assault verdict and the Court’s refusal to do anything to disturb it.
Presumably, Carroll will now be paid (if that hasn’t happened already), and Trump will continue arguing that the Court should reconsider its denial of certiorari in connection with his appeal of the second E. Jean Carroll verdict – the $83.3 million award at the 2024 trial, based on two other instances of defamation, as to which the Second Circuit rejected his appeal in 2025.