A legal fight that began in 2019 has reached the stage where the writer who won it is finally trying to collect.
The demand
With the Supreme Court declining to take up Trump's appeal, a $5 million jury verdict from 2023 became final, and Carroll's lawyers moved this week to enforce it, Al Jazeera reported. With post-judgment interest that has accrued since the verdict, the amount owed now stands at roughly $5.8 million. According to that report, a federal judge approved expedited collection proceedings and set an early-July deadline for Trump's team to respond.
Two cases, two verdicts
The $5.8 million traces to the first of two civil suits. In it, a Manhattan federal jury in May 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll, a former Elle advice columnist, in a department store in the 1990s and for defaming her by branding her a liar after she went public. It awarded $5 million.
A separate case, filed under New York's Adult Survivors Act, produced a much larger verdict: in January 2024 a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million for additional defamatory statements. That judgment is at an earlier stage of appeal and is being pursued separately.
Trump's position
Trump denies Carroll's underlying allegations and has cast both cases as politically motivated "lawfare." His legal team challenged the first verdict up the appellate ladder; a federal appeals court upheld it, and the Supreme Court's decision not to intervene — issued without comment, as is standard — left that ruling in place. His lawyers have not said publicly how they will respond to the collection order.
What's next
Because interest keeps accruing, the $5.8 million figure will grow the longer payment is delayed — a point Carroll's attorneys have cited in urging the court to move quickly. The far larger $83.3 million judgment remains outstanding as its own appeal continues, meaning the financial stakes of the Carroll litigation, already substantial, are not yet fully settled.
