Supreme Court won't hear Trump's appeal in E. Jean Carroll defamation case

The US Supreme Court will not hear an appeal requested by President Donald Trump to review the civil case that found he defamed and sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll.

A New York jury awarded Carroll $5m (£3.6m) in damages in 2023 over her civil claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, and then branded the incident a hoax on social media.

Trump denied the allegations and repeatedly claimed that the judge who oversaw the civil trial improperly allowed evidence to be presented that affected how the jury viewed him.

A federal appeals court agreed with the jury's verdict last year and said a new trial was not warranted. Trump then asked the highest court to intervene.

The Supreme Court gave no details about their decision not to take up the case, as is customary.

It was Trump's final hope of overturning the jury's unanimous verdict and means he will have to pay Carroll the damages she had been awarded.

Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that the Supreme Court's decision "affirms once and for all the jury's unanimous verdict that President Donald J Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E Jean Carroll".

"His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today's ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions," she added.

Carroll's counsel had not previously commented on the president's decision to bring a challenge to the Supreme Court.

In a lengthy Truth Social post after the ruling, Trump said he would continue to fight against the "Weaponization and Lawfare Case" including "the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength".

"This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another President, or Candidate to be," he continued.

"New York State created a Law, for an instant speck of time, going back many decades, in order to wrongfully "nab" me. It was tailormade, and this Injustice cannot be allowed to stand!"

In the petition to the Supreme Court, Trump's lawyers argued Carroll's lawyer should not have let jurors see the 2005 Access Hollywood tape that showed the president talking about groping and kissing women.

Trump's comments about the jury's findings in the case led a separate jury to order him to pay Carroll $83m for defaming her. A panel of federal judges denied his appeal of that decision in September.

While Trump was found to have defamed and sexually abused Carroll, the jury rejected her claim of rape as defined in New York's penal code.

Carroll, a former magazine columnist who is now 81, sued Trump for attacking her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room in Manhattan. The defamation stemmed from Trump's post on his Truth Social platform in 2022 denying her claim.

Trump has said Carroll was "not my type" and that she had lied.