President Donald Trump and the Justice Department have filed petitions asking the Supreme Court to review the $83.3 million defamation award won by writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of sexual assault. The administration is invoking a law that allows the federal government to step in when an employee faces a lawsuit over actions within the scope of their job.
If successful, Trump would be absolved from paying the damages himself. A lower court previously rejected both this effort and Trump's claim of presidential immunity. The DOJ argued in its filing, "Absent this Court's intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office. That alone deserves this Court's attention."
The petitions, reviewed by The Hill, have not yet been publicly docketed. The Supreme Court selects only a fraction of cases it receives, and the justices will consider these requests in a closed-door meeting after their summer recess. Carroll and her legal team declined to comment.
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist, first came forward during Trump's first term, accusing him of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump has consistently denied the allegations. In a first trial, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and for defaming Carroll in 2022 when he denied her claims, awarding her $5 million. The Supreme Court recently declined to hear Trump's appeal of that verdict, and the funds have been transferred to Carroll's law firm.
The current appeal focuses on the second trial, where Carroll won an additional $83.3 million. That case involved defamation claims over statements Trump made while president. Trump argues those statements were part of his official duties, but an appeals court ruled he forfeited that argument by not raising it earlier. Trump's personal attorneys wrote, "Because accusations bearing on the President's fitness for office are unquestionably matters of public concern, Presidential statements responding to press questions about such accusations are plainly official. This Court should say so."
The DOJ is taking a narrower approach, invoking the Westfall Act, a 1988 law designed to protect federal employees. It allows the Justice Department to substitute itself as the defendant when a lawsuit concerns actions within the scope of a government employee's job. During Trump's first term, his DOJ attempted to use this law, tying up the case in pretrial proceedings for years. The Biden-era DOJ dropped that effort in 2023. Now that Trump is back in office, his DOJ is trying again, appealing after a lower court ruled that time restrictions prevent another switch so late.
The department wrote, "Here, such respect means that this Court should determine that the last Administration's abandoned defense of a former President did not justify the Second Circuit's failure to allow this Administration's renewed defense of the current President." If the Supreme Court agrees, taxpayers would cover the damages, and Trump would be off the hook.
This latest legal maneuver comes amid broader political challenges for Trump, including sinking approval ratings and controversies over his administration's policies, such as ending demographic reporting at the EEOC. The outcome of this Supreme Court petition could have significant implications for presidential accountability and the scope of official immunity.
