{"id":457,"date":"2026-07-29T16:12:45","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T16:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=457"},"modified":"2026-07-29T16:12:45","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T16:12:45","slug":"trump-asks-supreme-court-to-hear-appeal-of-83-3-million-defamation-verdict-against-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=457","title":{"rendered":"Trump asks Supreme Court to hear appeal of $83.3 million defamation verdict against him"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Lawyers for President Donald Trump and the federal government on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to take up his appeal of the defamation case brought against him by journalist E. Jean Carroll. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in the case, and a federal appeals court in New York upheld that verdict.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=456\">The push to reduce the Supreme Court\u2019s power<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s lawyers told the Supreme Court that the lower court\u2019s ruling \u201cwrongly eviscerates Presidential immunity,\u201d adding that this is \u201cthe first case in our Nation\u2019s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a President for his conduct in office.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Carroll, who wrote a popular advice column for Elle magazine for 27 years, filed her lawsuit against Trump in November 2019, during his first term as president. Carroll had alleged that Trump had sexually abused her in a dressing room at a New York department store in 1996; her lawsuit contended that in June 2019, Trump had defamed her by calling her a liar \u2013 saying, for example, that he had never met Carroll, that she \u201cwas trying to sell a new book\u201d that \u201cshould be sold in the fiction section,\u201d and that her accusations were \u201ctotally false.\u201d In January 2024, a jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million.<\/p>\n<p>Trump appealed the $83.3 million award \u2013 which included both compensatory and punitive damages \u2013 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which last year . It found \u201cample evidence that Trump was recklessly indifferent to Carroll\u2019s health and safety\u201d and that \u201cCarroll was subjected to ongoing and prolific harassment as a result of these statements, including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury.\u201d The full court of appeals in April declined to rehear the case.<\/p>\n<p>In his filing on Tuesday, Trump\u2019s private lawyer, Robert Giuffra, contended that the 2nd Circuit never determined whether Trump\u2019s statements were entitled to immunity, \u201ceven after\u201d the Supreme Court in 2024  \u201cthat \u2018most of a President\u2019s public communications are likely to fall comfortably within\u2019 that protection.\u201d The $83.3 million award cannot be allowed to stand, Giuffra wrote, because \u201c[t]he threat of even a single damages judgment based on official acts will render all Presidents \u2018unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out [their] duties for fear that [they] may be next.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday\u2019s filing is the second one involving Carroll to come to the justices. On June 29, the Supreme Court turned down Trump\u2019s appeal in a separate case in which a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and awarded her $5 million. He argued in that case that Carroll\u2019s lawyers should not have been allowed to introduce testimony by other women who also alleged that Trump had assaulted them, as well as the 2005 \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=455\">Gorsuch says Americans must study history, \u2018warts, glories, and all\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>On July 8, Trump filed a , asking the justices to consider their denial of review. The court has not yet acted on that petition, although it could do so as soon as Aug. 17. However, Carroll has already received the $5 million award (plus interest), which had been set aside in an escrow account after the verdict.<\/p>\n<p>In a separate filing on Tuesday, the federal government also urged the Supreme Court to grant review to decide whether the court of appeals should have granted then-Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi\u2019s request to recertify that Trump made his statements as part of his role as president and therefore the federal government, rather than Trump, should be the defendant in Carroll\u2019s case.<\/p>\n<p>Then-Attorney General William Barr originally certified in 2020 that Trump was acting as president when he made the statements at the center of the case, but Merrick Garland, who served as attorney general to President Joe Biden, withdrew that certification in 2023. The 2nd Circuit turned down Bondi\u2019s April 2025 request to recertify Trump. It reasoned (among other things) that the law governing the substitution of the federal government for federal employees, known as the Westfall Act, required the attorney general to make the certification before Trump\u2019s 2024 trial.<\/p>\n<p>Acting Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan (who presumably is serving in that role because the current solicitor general, D. John Sauer, represented Trump in the lower courts while he was still in private practice) called the 2nd Circuit\u2019s decision not to grant Bondi\u2019s recertification request \u201cillogical.\u201d \u201cOnce this case was \u2026 removed to federal court,\u201d Mooppan wrote, the \u201cplain language\u201d of the Westfall Act \u201cdid not impose any time limit at all, much less a pretrial restriction, on when any recertification must occur.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Carroll\u2019s responses to the petitions from the government and Trump are due 30 days after the petitions are docketed, although she may seek an extension of time in which to file her briefs opposing review.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=453\">Trump urges SCOTUS to overturn $83.3 million defamation verdict<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawyers for President Donald Trump and the federal government on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to take up his appeal of the defamation case brought against him by journalist E. Jean Carroll. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in the case, and a federal appeals court in New York upheld that verdict. Read more The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Trump asks Supreme Court to hear appeal of $83.3 million defamation verdict against him - American Service Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=457\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump asks Supreme Court to hear appeal of $83.3 million defamation verdict against him - American Service Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lawyers for President Donald Trump and the federal government on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to take up his appeal of the defamation case brought against him by journalist E. 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