President Donald Trump's lawyers filed a 24-page motion late Tuesday night asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to freeze the $83.3 million defamation judgment won by E. Jean Carroll, buying time for the president to take the case to the Supreme Court on presidential immunity grounds.
The move marks the latest chapter in a legal saga that began in November 2019, when Carroll first sued Trump for defamation during his first term. Now, with the Department of Justice backing Trump's position and Carroll's own legal team signaling it will not oppose the stay request, the case appears headed toward a high-stakes showdown over whether a sitting president can be held personally liable for statements made while in office.
At its core, the dispute turns on a straightforward question: Were Trump's public denials of Carroll's allegations official presidential acts, or private conduct? The answer could reshape the boundaries of presidential immunity for generations.
Trump's presidential lawyer Justin Smith, of the James Otis Law Group, filed the motion with the Second Circuit on Tuesday. As Fox News Digital reported, Smith argued the court should halt enforcement of the judgment while Trump petitions the Supreme Court for review.
Smith wrote in the filing:
"This Court should now stay the mandate to allow President Trump to present important questions relating to, without limitation, Presidential immunity and the Westfall Act to the Supreme Court."
The filing further warned that without a stay, Trump faces "ongoing irreparable harm due to violation of his right to immunity from this defamation suit for his official statements as President of the United States of America." Trump's legal team argued there is a "fair prospect" that the Supreme Court will reverse what they described as erroneous rulings by the Second Circuit panel, specifically, that presidential immunity and Westfall Act protections were both waived.
The language in the motion is pointed. Trump's lawyers contended that allowing lower court proceedings to continue during Supreme Court review would "eviscerate the immunity [the Supreme Court has] recognized" and create "a likely inability to recover funds if the Supreme Court reverses, as it should."
Perhaps the most notable detail: Carroll's legal team is not fighting the stay. The filing states plainly that "Carroll does not oppose this motion", provided Trump increases his bond by roughly $7.46 million to cover post-judgment interest that has accrued while the original judgment has been under appeal.
That conditional non-opposition is telling. It suggests Carroll's side may recognize the legal merits of the immunity question, or at minimum sees little tactical advantage in opposing a temporary pause. Either way, the practical effect is the same, the $83.3 million judgment stays frozen while the Supreme Court decides whether to take up the case.
The Supreme Court has already shown willingness to engage with presidential immunity questions in recent terms, a pattern that has drawn significant public attention. Trump himself became the first sitting president to attend Supreme Court oral arguments earlier this year.
Two legal doctrines sit at the center of this appeal: presidential immunity and the Westfall Act. Trump's team argues both should have shielded him from personal liability in the Carroll case.
The Westfall Act, in broad terms, shifts the target of a lawsuit from an individual federal employee to the United States government itself when the employee's conduct falls within the scope of official duties. If Trump's 2019 denials of Carroll's allegations qualify as statements made in his capacity as president, the federal government, not Trump personally, would be the proper defendant. That distinction would effectively end Carroll's ability to collect an $83.3 million personal judgment.
The Washington Examiner reported that the Justice Department told the Second Circuit it intends to intervene in Trump's appeal and petition the Supreme Court on the Westfall Act question. The DOJ's position is that Trump's public denials of Carroll's rape allegation were made within the scope of his job as president, meaning the federal government should be substituted as the defendant.
Trump's lawyers said the Supreme Court petition will address "whether the President's absolute immunity from civil claims based on official acts can be waived at all" and whether the DOJ "timely filed, and did not waive, a renewed Westfall Act certification."
The immunity argument gained additional force after the Supreme Court's 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States. As Newsmax reported, Smith wrote in the filing: "The decision in Trump v. United States makes clear that President Trump has a serious claim that the district court conducted the trial in this case in violation of presidential immunity."
Three Second Circuit judges, in a dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc, identified what Trump's team describes as legal errors in the panel's handling of these issues. That dissent could strengthen the case for Supreme Court review, signaling that serious jurists within the circuit itself found the lower court's reasoning flawed.
The timeline of this case stretches across two presidential terms. Carroll originally sued for defamation in November 2019. The judgment came in May 2023, when Trump was out of office and facing what the filing describes as "myriad legal cases" under then-President Joe Biden. The political environment surrounding those cases has shifted considerably since Trump's return to the White House.
The broader institutional battles around Trump's legal exposure have been a defining feature of the past several years. But the Carroll case stands apart because it tests a legal principle, presidential immunity from civil suit, that carries implications far beyond one plaintiff's claim.
Smith himself is no ordinary litigator in this matter. Trump nominated him in early March to serve as a United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit. The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on Smith's nomination on April 15. His dual role, as Trump's personal lawyer in the Carroll case and as a judicial nominee, adds another layer of interest to the proceedings.
The Supreme Court's docket has been unusually active on matters touching the executive branch. Justices have weighed in on multiple Trump administration policies in recent months, and federal courts have been grappling with the downstream effects of high-profile rulings, including orders implementing Supreme Court decisions in other Trump-linked disputes.
If the Second Circuit grants the stay, the $83.3 million judgment remains on hold while the Supreme Court decides whether to accept the case. Trump's lawyers have asked the court to maintain the stay "until the Supreme Court's final disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari." If the high court takes the case, the freeze could last well into the next term.
Several open questions remain. The exact terms of Carroll's conditional non-opposition beyond the bond increase are not fully detailed. The timeline for the Supreme Court's decision on whether to grant certiorari is uncertain. And the broader question, whether the 2024 immunity ruling in Trump v. United States retroactively changes the legal landscape for civil suits filed during a president's term, has not been definitively answered.
What is clear is that the DOJ's decision to back Trump's position adds considerable institutional weight to the appeal. This is not merely a personal legal strategy. The executive branch itself is arguing that the principle at stake, immunity for official presidential statements, is worth defending at the highest court in the land.
For years, Trump's critics treated the Carroll judgment as a settled matter, a political trophy. Now the legal ground beneath it is shifting. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, the $83.3 million number that dominated so many headlines may turn out to be written in pencil, not ink.