# E. Jean Carroll Finally Collects $5.6 Million From Trump After Three-Year Legal Fight
Writer E. Jean Carroll has finally received the millions of dollars a jury awarded her three years ago after a federal civil trial found President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her, according to a court filing made public this week.
## The Payment Breakdown
Court records show that a payment of $5,625,005.48 was transferred to Carroll’s legal team on July 9, closing out one of the longest-running legal sagas involving the president. The figure represents far more than the jury’s original verdict — it reflects ,the $5 million in damages awarded in the jury’s May 2023 verdict, plus post-judgment interest that accrued in the subsequent three years,. Those funds had been sitting in a court-controlled account for years while Trump pursued a lengthy series of appeals aimed at overturning or delaying the judgment.
According to reporting on the disbursement, ,the money was transferred by the U.S. court system, which had been holding it, to an account set up for Carroll by her attorney, Roberta Kaplan,, with the transfer confirmed in a docket entry filed Tuesday.
## Kaplan Speaks Out
Carroll’s attorney did not mince words in celebrating the milestone. ,Kaplan noted that three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll, and said the legal team was pleased to report that she had finally received the damages payment awarded by that verdict,.
The road to payment was anything but smooth. ,A federal judge who recently ordered Trump to make the payment rejected his last-ditch efforts, noting pointedly that he “has been stalling this case for years.”,
## A Case Trump Fought at Every Turn
Trump’s legal team exhausted nearly every available avenue to delay handing over the money. Most recently, ,a payment of $5,625,005.48 was disbursed to Carroll and her attorneys on Monday, after a federal judge rejected Trump’s effort to further delay the payment,. That ruling followed a failed attempt by Trump’s attorneys to halt the transfer at the nation’s highest court. As one outlet detailed, ,Trump tried to stop the payment by arguing it should not go through until the Supreme Court decides whether to rehear his petition, a long-shot gambit that is rarely successful,, and as of the transfer, ,the Supreme Court had not responded, to that request.
The high court had already dealt Trump a significant blow weeks earlier. ,The Supreme Court in late June refused to hear Trump’s appeal of the sexual abuse and defamation verdict,, effectively exhausting his options to overturn the underlying finding of liability.
Despite receiving the funds, Carroll’s team is not treating the matter as fully closed. According to court filings, ,Carroll’s lawyers said she would use the money to fund her retirement and will “place the award in an interest-bearing account until Defendant’s petition for rehearing is denied.”,
## Origins of the Case
The payment stems from allegations Carroll first made public during Trump’s first term in office. ,Carroll wrote in her 2019 book that Trump had raped her in 1996 in the fitting room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City,. When Trump publicly denied ever meeting her and dismissed her as “not my type,” Carroll pursued legal action years later. ,She sued Trump under a New York state law that opened a one-year window for adult survivors of sexual assault to seek civil relief for claims otherwise barred by the statute of limitations, alleging both battery and defamation over his denials,.
At trial, jurors heard powerful corroborating testimony. ,Two other women who also accused Trump of sexual assault testified, each describing similar incidents decades apart in which Trump interrupted a friendly conversation by suddenly and forcefully kissing them,.
## A Second, Larger Judgment Still Pending
This payment resolves only one of two major judgments Carroll has secured against Trump. In a separate defamation lawsuit tied to comments Trump made while in office, ,a Manhattan jury in January 2024 ordered Trump to pay Carroll a total of $83.3 million in damages,. That far larger sum remains unpaid, as ,Trump is still in the process of appealing that judgment,, and ,his lawyers have signaled they intend to ask the Supreme Court to hear the case after an appeals court refused to overturn the eight-figure judgment,, though no formal petition had been filed as of this week.
## Trump’s Response
Trump’s legal team continued to dispute the merits of the case even after cutting the check. His attorneys ,described the Carroll litigation as a “hoax” and said the president “will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare.”, Notably, the sum paid barely registers against Trump’s overall fortune — ,his net worth stood at $6.3 billion as of Tuesday morning, making the $5.6 million he sent Carroll only a tiny fraction of his overall wealth,.
## What Comes Next
With the $5.6 million now in Carroll’s hands, attention shifts to the much larger $83.3 million defamation judgment still winding through the appeals process. Legal observers note that Trump’s odds of reversing that verdict remain slim, given the repeated rejections his legal team has faced at both the appellate level and the Supreme Court. For Carroll, who first went public with her allegations more than seven years ago, the payment marks a hard-fought, if partial, resolution to a legal battle that has spanned two of Trump’s presidential terms.