'Karma Bit Him Big Time': Trump Suffers Major Legal Blow as Supreme Court Rejects Appeal

Donald Trump was dealt a major legal setback in New York last week when, on 29 June, the US Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal in writer E. Jean Carroll's defamation case, leaving in place a judgment of about $5.8 million that he has still not paid, according to court filings. Within hours, Trump vowed on his Truth Social platform to keep fighting the case, despite the country's highest court effectively ending his legal avenue of appeal.

The litigation in which Carroll, a former advice columnist, accused the president of sexually abusing her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid‑1990s and then defaming her decades later. A New York jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million. The money was placed in an escrow account while Trump pursued appeals, and as interest has accumulated, the total now stands at nearly $5.8 million. None of it has reached Carroll.

Supreme Court Loss Leaves Donald Trump Cornered

Trump's legal strategy hinged on persuading the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court's findings in the 2023 civil trial. That attempt ended on 29 June when the justices declined to take up his petition, allowing the verdict and judgment to stand without further review. In legal terms, that should have been the last word.

Instead, Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan told the court that Trump's team emailed her almost immediately after the Supreme Court's decision, asking for yet another delay before paying the judgment. According to a new briefing filed a day after the ruling, Trump's lawyers said they planned to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear the case.

Kaplan's response, laid out in blunt language rarely seen in federal filings, was that enough was enough. '[A]fter four years of litigation across every level of the federal court system, it is time for this case to end,' she wrote, arguing that there was no legal basis for further delay. Under a prior stipulation and order agreed in 2023, she said, Carroll is 'now entitled to obtain payment of the money due under the judgment.'

The 2023 agreement is key. To secure a stay of execution on the judgment while he appealed, Trump agreed that funds placed with the court would be released once the Supreme Court either ruled in his favour or refused to hear the case. The latter has now happened. 'Those conditions were satisfied when the Supreme Court denied his petition for certiorari,' Kaplan wrote, adding pointedly: 'It is time for him to pay Carroll.'

Donald Trump Faces Mounting Judgments And Online Ire

The escrow judgment is only part of Trump's financial exposure to Carroll. In a separate defamation trial stemming from statements he made in 2022, a jury found that Trump again defamed Carroll when he denied her allegations, insisted she was not 'his type' and accused her of inventing the story to sell books. That jury awarded her $83.3 million. Between the two cases, Carroll has been awarded more than $89 million on paper, yet, as Kaplan notes, she has not received 'a penny' from either judgment.

Kaplan has now asked the judge to swiftly order disbursement of the $5.8 million held by the court, relying on the 2023 stipulation as a binding promise Trump cannot walk back. If the judge agrees, Trump would have little room left to avoid paying at least this first, smaller sum.

Outside the courtroom, the reaction has been predictably caustic. Social media users seized on the Supreme Court's move as the final word. 'That's the end of the line for Trump on the Carroll case,' one Threads user wrote. Another posted: 'May this be the first domino to fall.'

Some users speculated that Trump might now lash out publicly at Carroll again, repeating the sort of comments that already cost him tens of millions of dollars. 'He will probably disparage her in his public reaction to this ruling, thus committing defamation AGAIN, resulting in another award for her!!' one person wrote, prompting a curt reply: 'Yes, he's an idiot, so I'm sure you're right.' Another commenter put it more crudely: 'Good, that's what he gets! Karma bit him big time in his big a–! Time for him to pay up!!'

Even as he resists paying Carroll, Trump has continued to target her through official channels. According to the filing, he pushed his Justice Department in May to open a criminal investigation into whether Carroll committed perjury during her civil cases, turning what began as a private dispute into a dispute entangled with federal law enforcement power.

Nothing about any new criminal probe has been independently confirmed in the available court documents, and those allegations should be treated with caution until more information emerges. What is now plainly established, however, is that the Supreme Court has refused to rescue Trump from a damning civil judgment, and a New York writer who first spoke out about him years ago is closer than ever to collecting money he has spent years trying not to pay.