A federal appeals court said on April 29 it would not grant a special meeting of its judges to hear an appeal by President Donald Trump against a verdict that ordered him to pay $83 million for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it would not hold an en banc (on the bench) hearing, in which the entire membership of the court would be expected to participate.
However, the Second Circuit voted 5–3 against the hearing.
The judges who dissented were Steven J. Menashi, Michael H. Park, and Debra Ann Livingston.
A dissenting opinion written by Menashi stated that the appeals panel should have let the United States be substituted for Trump as the defendant, because he was acting in the “scope of his office or employment” at the time of the original lawsuit in 2019.
$83 Million ‘Grossly Excessive’
They also said Trump should have been able to argue that he was protected by presidential immunity, and said the $83 million award was “grossly excessive.”“Put together, these proceedings represent a manifest miscarriage of justice,” Menashi wrote.
Carroll first made her allegation against Trump in a 2019 memoir titled “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.”
She stated that Trump had sexually abused her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, but was unable to give a date and said it was sometime in the 1990s.
In an interview with The Hill in June 2019, Trump strongly denied her allegations.
He said, “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?”
Asked by the reporter for The Hill whether he believed Carroll was lying, Trump replied, “Totally lying.”
Carroll then sued him for defamation in November 2019.
On Oct. 19, 2022, Trump gave a deposition in which he was asked about a Truth Social post he made on Oct. 12 that year and later deleted, in which he wrote, “This ‘Ms. Bergdorf Goodman’ case is a complete con job, and our legal system in this Country, but especially in New York State ... is a broken disgrace.”
During that deposition, he was also asked for comments about Carroll.
“I still don’t know this woman. I think she’s a whack job,” he said.
He did not attend the subsequent trial in May 2023 when a jury found that he had sexually abused Carroll and then defamed her.
Trump briefly testified at a second defamation trial in January 2024 when a jury awarded Carroll $83 million.
In a recent statement, Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said her client was “eager for this case, originally filed in 2019, to be over so that she can finally obtain justice.”
The Supreme Court has not yet made a decision on Trump’s application after his legal team filed a petition for writ of certiorari on Nov. 10.
In November 2025, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team told The Epoch Times via email, “The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes.”
After the latest development, The Epoch Times reached out to Trump’s legal team and Carroll’s attorney for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
