Appeals Court Upholds Carroll’s $83 Million Judgment Against Trump

The judges rejected President Trump’s argument that the Supreme Court’s decision extending presidential immunity should shield him from liability for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld an $83.3 million jury award against President Trump for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019, after she accused him of a decades-old rape in a Manhattan department store — an attack for which he was separately found liable for sexual abuse.

The court also rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that the Supreme Court’s decision last year affording presidential immunity for official acts barred a finding of liability in Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit.

The unsigned ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan was unanimous.

The president had assailed Ms. Carroll after she accused him of the assault, saying her claim was “totally false” and that she was trying to sell a book. He continued his verbal attacks on her on social media, at news conferences and even during the trial, in which Ms. Carroll’s lawyers had urged the jury to impose a large award in order to stop him.

A large portion of the verdict — $65 million — consisted of punitive damages after the jury found Mr. Trump had acted with malice.

In its ruling on Monday, the appeals court said the record in the case supported the finding by the trial judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, that “the degree of reprehensibility of Mr. Trump’s conduct was remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented.”

The court noted that Mr. Trump “never wavered or relented in his public attacks” on Ms. Carroll, that he had issued statements castigating her “as a politically and financially motivated liar, insinuating that she was too unattractive for him to have sexually assaulted her and threatening that she would ‘pay dearly’ for speaking out.”

The court said Ms. Carroll was subjected to public harassment as a result of Mr. Trump’s statements, including death threats and threats of physical injury. Mr. Trump’s attacks continued throughout the lengthy litigation, the court said, and “became more extreme and frequent.”

The court cited one statement, two days into the trial, in which Mr. Trump “proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll ‘a thousand times.’”

The appeals court said “the jury was entitled to find that Trump would not stop defaming Carroll unless he was subjected to a substantial financial penalty.”

In December, a different three-judge panel of the Second Circuit unanimously upheld a separate civil verdict Ms. Carroll won against Mr. Trump in 2023. In that case, a jury awarded her $5 million in damages after finding him liable for sexually abusing Ms. Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and defaming her in statements he made in 2022, after he was out of office.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said he intends to ask the Supreme Court to review the jury’s $5 million verdict and liability finding.

On Monday, Aaron Harison, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team, said in a statement that the American people stand with Mr. Trump and demand “an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system.”

Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said that “we look forward to an end to the appellate process so that justice will finally be done.”

Ms. Carroll has not yet received any damages that the juries in the two trials have said Mr. Trump owes her.

Ms. Carroll testified in Manhattan federal court in 2023 that she ran into Mr. Trump at Bergdorf’s in the mid-1990s, where he asked her for help buying a present for a female friend. They were in the lingerie department when Mr. Trump forced Ms. Carroll into a dressing room and shoved her against a wall, Ms. Carroll said. He then pulled down her tights and inserted his finger and then his penis into her vagina, she testified.

Although Ms. Carroll had accused Mr. Trump of rape, the jury in May 2023 found that he had sexually abused her but did not find that he had raped her.

In Mr. Trump’s appeal of the $83.3 million defamation verdict, his lawyers cited the July 2024 Supreme Court decision, arguing that “presidential immunity forecloses any liability here and requires the complete dismissal of all claims.”

Judge Kaplan had ruled that Mr. Trump waived any immunity argument when he did not raise it early in the litigation.

The appeals court, in its 70-page decision on Monday, said, “We hold that the district court did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury’s duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case.”

Monday’s unsigned ruling was issued by Judges Denny Chin, Sarah A.L. Merriam and Maria Araújo Kahn. Judge Chin was appointed to the court by President Barack Obama; Judges Merriam and Kahn were appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

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