The U.S. Supreme Court has again turned down President Donald Trump, rejecting his last bid to overturn the roughly $5.6 million judgment won by writer E. Jean Carroll, whom a New York jury found he sexually abused and defamed.
The justices denied Trump’s petition for rehearing on Monday — his attempt to get the court to reconsider its June 29 refusal to hear his appeal. After that first denial, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan on July 8 ordered the disputed sum, the original $5 million verdict plus interest, released to Carroll, who has since collected it.
In the request to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers argued that he deserved a chance to argue his case because another appeal had been filed in a lower court.
The attorneys claimed that Trump’s presidential immunity should have prevented his statements from being used against him in two trials. They said that the argument had not been made sooner because they had focused on other tactics in their defense of the president.
“That use of official Presidential statements matters, because this Court has made clear that official Presidential acts may not be used as evidence to impose liability for other conduct,” Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court.
