E. Jean Carroll Wins $5.8M Release — Judge Orders Trump Payout
- Jul 9
- 3 min read
E. Jean Carroll is finally set to collect. A federal judge ruled Wednesday, July 8, 2026, that the former advice columnist can formally receive the $5.8 million that has sat in a court escrow account since a jury found that President Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed her. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan directed the release of the money, along with all interest accrued since the verdict, closing one of the longest-running legal battles between the president and a private citizen.
The ruling follows directly from the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to let the 2023 civil verdict stand, exhausting Trump’s primary avenue of appeal. With the highest court declining to disturb the jury’s findings, Kaplan concluded there was no remaining legal basis to keep the funds locked in escrow — money Trump deposited years ago to secure the judgment while his appeals played out.
The underlying case dates to a Manhattan federal jury’s May 2023 verdict. Jurors found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in 1996 in the dressing room of a luxury Manhattan department store, and that he later defamed her when he denied her allegations after she described the attack publicly in her 2019 memoir, published during his first term as president. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
Court-ordered interest has grown that award to roughly $5.8 million — a reminder that in high-profile civil litigation, the cost of delay compounds. Every month the money sat in escrow while appeals wound through the Second Circuit and up to the Supreme Court, interest accrued in Carroll’s favor.
Trump’s legal team responded immediately, asking a court to block the payment while they pursue a further appeal. But legal analysts note that the options remaining are narrow. The Supreme Court’s refusal to take the case left the verdict intact, and courts rarely claw back judgments once the final appellate word has been spoken.
It is worth distinguishing this case from Carroll’s second, larger judgment. In January 2024, a separate jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defamatory statements he made in 2019 while in the White House. That judgment has followed its own appellate track. The $5.8 million released this week stems solely from the 2023 verdict covering the sexual abuse finding and a 2022 defamatory statement.
For Carroll, now in her early 80s, the ruling is vindication measured in more than dollars. Her attorneys have argued throughout that the case was about accountability — establishing in a court of law, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the most powerful man in the country committed sexual abuse and then lied about his accuser. Two juries and every reviewing court have now left those findings standing.
For Trump, the ruling lands amid an extraordinarily crowded week. It came as his administration managed an active military confrontation with Iran, a NATO summit in Ankara, and a Ukraine diplomacy push — a split-screen of presidential power and personal legal defeat that has become a defining feature of his second term.
The political reaction followed familiar lines. Trump has consistently called Carroll’s allegations a hoax and framed the litigation as part of a broader campaign of legal warfare against him. Carroll’s supporters counter that the case proceeded through the ordinary machinery of civil justice: a jury trial, cross-examination, appeals, and now enforcement of a final judgment.
Legally, the case has already left a mark. It tested whether a sitting or former president enjoys any special shield against civil enforcement of personal judgments — and the answer, delivered across multiple rulings, has been no. The escrow release confirms that a final civil judgment against a president collects like any other.
The mechanics from here are straightforward. The escrowed funds, plus interest, will be disbursed to Carroll unless Trump’s emergency motion to block payment succeeds — an outcome most observers consider unlikely given the Supreme Court’s posture. Carroll has previously said she intends to use money from the judgments for causes Trump dislikes, telling interviewers she would spend it on things like women’s rights.
What to watch next: the fate of Trump’s eleventh-hour motion to stay the payment, the status of the separate $83.3 million judgment as its appeal concludes, and whether the president escalates his public attacks on Carroll — statements that triggered additional defamation exposure in the past. After seven years of litigation, the first of Carroll’s two judgments is now, at last, being paid.
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