Politics

E. Jean Carroll Collected the $5.63 Million Trump Owed Her After Three Years of Stalling

By Mike Harper · July 15, 2026

The check finally cleared.

E. Jean Carroll received the $5.63 million she was owed from Donald Trump on Monday — the first money she has actually collected from the president after three years of legal proceedings, appeals, and delays that stretched long past the original jury verdict.

The payment covers the $5 million jury award from the May 2023 trial, in which a federal jury found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and defaming her when he denied it, plus interest that accrued while Trump’s legal team worked through a series of unsuccessful appeals and emergency motions to avoid paying.

The path to Monday’s payment was anything but simple. Trump’s lawyers filed an appeal immediately after the verdict. Then, when Carroll won on appeal and the money was ordered released, Trump’s team filed an emergency motion asking the Second Circuit to block the transfer. The Second Circuit rejected that emergency stay the same day it was filed, and the funds were transferred to Carroll’s attorneys shortly after.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the payment had been received. Carroll herself has not commented publicly.

The $5.63 million represents just one piece of what Carroll is owed. A separate jury in January 2024 awarded her $83.3 million in the defamation case that stemmed from Trump’s repeated public denials — a figure that dwarfs the first verdict. Trump has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear that case, with the petition due by the end of July. If the Supreme Court declines to take it up, Carroll’s lawyers can move to enforce that judgment as well.

Trump has denied all of Carroll’s allegations and has continued to do so publicly throughout the proceedings. His legal team has argued the damages in both cases were excessive and constitutionally impermissible.

The cases have moved through the courts across two Trump presidencies, two separate trials, and years of public back-and-forth between Carroll and the president. Monday’s payment is the first time money has actually changed hands.

What happens next depends largely on the Supreme Court. If it accepts the $83.3 million case, another year or more of litigation follows. If it declines, Carroll’s attorneys can begin enforcement proceedings on what would be one of the largest civil defamation judgments against a private individual in American history.

For now, after three years, Carroll has $5.63 million. The rest remains unresolved.