Appeals Court Rejects Trump Bid to Rehear Carroll Defamation Case

Donald Trump’s attempt to have a full federal appeals court rehear his challenge to an $83.3 million defamation judgment against him was rejected by a divided Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ruling, which came in one of two cases brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, allows Trump to appeal directly to the Supreme Court. The high court is already considering another case involving Carroll and Trump, where he was ordered to pay $5 million for defamation and sexual abuse allegations.

According to multiple reports, Judge Denny Chin wrote that it was the fourth time the Second Circuit had denied a request for all judges to hear an appeal in this specific defamation case. The court rejected Trump's arguments that he should be dismissed as a defendant because he made the comments while president and that the United States should replace him.

Chin noted that Carroll first publicly asserted in 2019 in a memoir that Trump had sexually abused her in the 1990s. Trump then claimed he had never met her, called it a false accusation, and said “she’s not my type” in an interview. The defamation case was filed by Carroll in November 2019.

Trump did not attend a May 2023 trial when a jury found that he had sexually abused Carroll and later defamed her. But he briefly testified at a second trial in January 2024, where the jury awarded Carroll $83 million for defamation. The ruling marked the third and fourth times the full Second Circuit court had voted to deny en banc rehearing of rulings in this specific case.