Adjudicated Rapist says owing his victim money for defamation is "distracting him from his historic presidency"
Trump complains his Carroll appeal is distracting him from his ‘historic presidency’
The justices are scheduled to consider whether to take up Trump’s attack on the $5 million sexual abuse and defamation verdict.
Illustration of Jordan Rubin
Jan. 29, 2026, 1:46 PM E
https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-e-jean-carroll-appeal-distraction-historic-presidency
Now that Donald Trump has filed his final reply brief to the Supreme Court, the justices have set a date to consider whether to grant review of his petition seeking to reverse one of the civil verdicts won by E. Jean Carroll, the writer he was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming.
The justices distributed the petition for their Feb. 20 private conference, where the Carroll case will be among the pending petitions hoping to get the court’s attention. We could learn in the days or weeks after whether the court wants to hear the case that Trump has been losing in the lower courts. It takes four justices to grant review.
Though the context is obviously unusual in that it involves a sitting president’s personal appeal over his adjudicated sexual abuse (which he has denied), the litigation is relatively typical when it comes to seeking high court review. It features the petitioning party (Trump) arguing that his appeal raises important issues that have divided the lower courts and therefore need a nationwide resolution, while the opposing party (Carroll) argues that there’s no good reason for the justices to get involved.
The legal issues involve evidence that Carroll used to win a $5 million verdict against Trump in 2023. The president argues that he was unfairly prejudiced by the admission at trial of, for example, the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. He argues that the approval of the tape’s admission by the New York-based federal appeals court conflicts with the way other federal circuits handle evidentiary issues. It’s the sort of legal argument that any party would make in attempting to convince the justices to grant review — that is, it involves a “circuit split” meriting the high court’s resolution and has legal significance beyond this one case.
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