President Trump's legal team has asked the Supreme Court to throw out an $83.3 million defamation judgment awarded to E. Jean Carroll, arguing for the first time at the nation's highest court that presidential immunity bars the entire case.
Trump's lawyers filed the petition on July 28, invoking the Supreme Court's landmark 2024 presidential immunity decision as their central argument, Axios reported. The filing contends that Trump's public statements denying Carroll's allegations were official acts made from the White House, and that no court in American history has ever imposed damages on a sitting president for conduct in office.
The $83.3 million award, $65 million in punitive damages and $18.3 million for Carroll's claimed suffering, stems from a second civil trial focused on Trump's public denials of Carroll's accusations. His attorneys now want the Supreme Court to decide whether those denials, issued through press releases and responses to reporters, qualify as protected presidential speech.
The filing pulls no punches on the constitutional stakes. Trump's attorneys wrote in the petition:
"This is the first case in our nation's history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a president for his conduct in office."
They went further, framing the case as an assault on the presidency itself rather than a private dispute. Trump's lawyers argued that a president answering reporters' questions and issuing a press release from the White House, defending himself against accusations bearing on his fitness for office, cannot be the basis for nearly $100 million in civil liability.
"Here, the president of the United States has been ordered to pay nearly $100 million in damages... for issuing a press release and answering reporters' questions, from the White House, defending against attacks on his fitness for office."
Beyond the immunity argument, Trump's team is also asking the Court to substitute the United States government as the defendant, a legal maneuver that lower courts have already rejected. If the Court agreed, the judgment would shift from Trump personally to the federal government, on the theory that he was acting within the scope of his official duties when he made the statements at issue.
The new petition arrives weeks after the Supreme Court declined, without noted dissent, to hear Trump's separate appeal of a $5 million verdict in a related Carroll case. That earlier jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll at a Manhattan department store in spring 1996 and for defaming her when he denied the allegation in 2022, AP News reported.
The Court issued a brief, unexplained order, standard procedure for declining to take a case, and Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan declared the fight over that verdict finished.
Trump responded on social media, casting the case in broader terms. "This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for," he posted. His legal team had earlier sought a stay of the $83.3 million judgment while pursuing the immunity appeal, signaling that the larger defamation award was always the main legal battleground.
But the June 29 denial did not end the maneuvering around the smaller verdict. Trump's attorneys filed a last-ditch motion asking Judge Lewis Kaplan not to release nearly $5.8 million held in escrow, arguing that collection cannot begin while any Supreme Court proceedings remain pending. They also contended that a future immunity ruling in the $83.3 million case could undermine the earlier $5 million verdict, since presidential statements were introduced as evidence in the 2023 trial, the Washington Examiner reported.
Kaplan, Carroll's attorney, framed the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the $5 million appeal as definitive. She called it "the end of the line" and said Trump's repeated efforts to avoid accountability had all failed.
That confidence may be tested now. The $83.3 million petition raises a distinct constitutional question, whether the 2024 immunity ruling, which broadly expanded protections for presidential conduct, applies retroactively to civil damages cases. Lower courts have so far said no. Trump's team is betting the Supreme Court will disagree.
The case has drawn attention well beyond the courtroom. A short-lived criminal referral involving Carroll rattled Senate Republicans earlier this year before collapsing within hours, underscoring how politically charged every thread of the litigation has become.
The Supreme Court has not yet indicated whether it will accept the case. If it does, oral arguments would likely fall in the Court's next term, a timeline that would keep the judgment in legal limbo well into 2027. If it declines, Trump would owe the full $83.3 million, plus whatever interest has accrued.
The core legal dispute is narrow but consequential. The 2024 immunity decision gave presidents broad protection from criminal prosecution for official acts. Trump's lawyers want to extend that shield to civil liability, a step no court has yet taken in the context of defamation damages.
The argument has a certain constitutional logic: if a president cannot be criminally charged for official conduct, it is hard to explain why he can be sued for tens of millions over the same conduct. But Carroll's side will counter that denying a private citizen's sexual assault allegation is personal, not presidential, regardless of where the denial was made.
The Supreme Court's recent willingness to affirm broad executive authority in other cases may give Trump's team reason for optimism. But the justices' silence on the $5 million appeal, no dissents, no commentary, offers no clear signal on how they view the larger judgment.
Meanwhile, the Court's docket continues to fill as it winds through a consequential stretch of decisions on executive power, individual rights, and the boundaries of federal authority. Where the Carroll case lands on that list, or whether it lands at all, will say as much about the Court's appetite for political risk as it does about the law.
If the justices duck this one, they will have left standing a precedent that lets any jury, in any jurisdiction, levy eight-figure damages against a president for answering questions at a press briefing. That is the kind of precedent that outlasts any single case, and any single president.