President Donald Trump’s attorneys made what could be a fatal mistake in the latest bid not to pay writer E. Jean Carroll after he was found liable for sexual abuse, according to a legal expert.
Court filings show the mistake could cost him nearly $5.8 million.
Trump’s lawyers filed a late-night brief on July 7 asking U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to block Carroll from collecting the money — funds that have sat in a court account since 2023.
While attorneys claimed was still “pending” before the U.S. Supreme Court, the docket showed otherwise, noted legal journalist Roger Parloff.
“Trump asks Judge [Lewis] Kaplan not to release $5.8M from court escrow to E Jean Carroll claiming his ‘petition for rehearing [of cert denial!] remains pending before SCOTUS,’” Parloff wrote on X. “But SCOTUS docket shows his petition was ‘not accepted for filing’ on July 6.”
“The only problem?” legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted on X. “In an entry dated yesterday, the petition was not accepted for filing. Trump’s brief to Kaplan was filed at 11:49 pm.”
Trump’s lawyers submitted their brief late at night, citing a petition the Supreme Court had already turned away hours earlier.
A jury found Trump liable in 2023 for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and awarded her $5 million. Every court that reviewed the verdict upheld it, according to court records.
“To date, Carroll has agreed to each of Defendant’s many requests to delay the payment he owes her,” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote in a filing. “Given the extraordinary lengths he has taken to avoid such payments and that each of those efforts has been denied in full, that cooperation ends today.”
“It is time for him to pay Carroll,” she added.
“A petition for rehearing is likely to fail,” the attorney also warned.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Trump’s certiorari petition — his formal request for the justices to hear his appeal — on June 29, according to CNBC. There were no noted dissents. That included three justices Trump himself appointed.
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