The US Supreme Court will not hear President Donald Trump’s appeal to review a civil case that found him defamed and sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll.
A New York jury awarded Carroll $5m (£3.6m) in damages in 2023 for her civil claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and later called the incident a hoax on social media.
Trump has denied the allegations and has repeatedly argued that the judge overseeing the civil trial improperly allowed evidence that influenced his jury.
A federal appeals court agreed with the jury’s verdict last year and said a new trial was not warranted. Trump then asked the high court to intervene.
The Supreme Court was not informed that the decision was taken not to consider the case.
Trump had it the last hope of overturning the jury’s unanimous verdict and means he will have to pay Carol the compensation she awarded.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said the Supreme Court’s decision “affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll.”
“His numerous attempts to appeal this verdict have failed, and today’s decision ends his quest to avoid responsibility for his actions,” she added.
Carroll’s lawyer has not previously commented on the president’s decision to appeal to the Supreme Court.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social after the ruling, Trump said he would continue to fight the “Guns and Lawfulness Case,” including the “ridiculous defamation suit, with all his might and might.”
“This case is truly against the United States of America and everything it stands for and should never be allowed to happen to another president or future candidate,” he continued.
“The State of New York created a law for a momentary point in time, going back many decades, to wrongfully ‘grab’ me. It was custom-made, and this injustice cannot be tolerated!”
In a petition to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers argued that Carroll’s lawyer should not have allowed the jury to see a 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which the president said he groped and kissed women.
Trump’s comments about the jury’s findings in the case led to a separate jury ordering him to pay Carroll $83 million for defamation of her. A panel of federal judges rejected his appeal of that decision in September.
While Trump was found to have defamed and assaulted Carroll, the jury rejected her claim of rape, as defined in the New York Penal Code.
Carroll, a former columnist for the magazine, now 81, sued Trump for assaulting her in the mid-1990s in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store. The defamation was sparked by Trump’s 2022 post on his Truth Social platform denying her claim.
Trump said Carroll was “not my type” and that she was lying.