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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.
Sept. 8, 2025, 10:12 a.m. ET
A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a $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 of 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 he accused him of the assault, continuing his verbal attacks on her on social media, at news conferences and even during the trial, during 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 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.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
