An American appeals court has upheld a jury’s $83.3 million penalty against President Donald Trump for defaming author E. Jean Carroll, whom he was found to have sexually assaulted.
The January 2024 ruling came with $65 million in punitive damages after the judge found Donald Trump guilty of acting maliciously in his several statements about E. Jean, $7.3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million as payment for an online campaign to rebuild Jean’s reputation.
The order, which stunned many in the federal court, was way more than the over $10 million in damages for defamation that Caroll asked for.
The U.S. President, who was found liable by a jury for sexually assaulting Jean in a separate federal civil case in New York, jumped on his Truth social platform to blast Caroll, the trial and the judge, whom he described as “an extremely abusive individual.”
“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,” the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit wrote.
When she first made her assault allegations public, 81-year-old Caroll accused Trump of defaming her in 2019 by saying “she is not my type.”
Jurors watched Trump’s October 2022 deposition during which he mistook a photo of Caroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples, which cast doubt on his claim that Caroll was not his “type.”
2 years ago, a different federal jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a department store dressing room in 1996 and subsequently defaming her in 2022, when he described her as a “complete con job.”
“We agree with the district court that the jury was entitled to find that Trump would not stop defaming Carroll unless he was subjected to a substantial financial penalty,” the appeals court ruled on Monday, 8th of September, 2025.
Trump wasn’t mandated to testify or attend the trial. However, he did not fail to use the case to fuel his claims of being victimized while he campaigned for another term as U.S. President.
