Trump pays writer E Jean Carroll $5m in damages over sexual abuse and defamation

US President Donald Trump has paid writer E Jean Carroll more than $5m (£3.7m) in damages three years after he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her in a civil case, her lawyers confirmed.

“Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict,” Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, said in a short statement on Tuesday.

Trump was pushing to delay the payment, in order to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision not to hear an appeal of the case. But last week he was ordered to pay the damages by the judge overseeing the case.

A representative from Trump’s legal team declined to comment on the payment.

A statement from Carroll’s legal team confirmed that she had been paid more than $5.62m – the $5m judgement plus the interest accrued during the appeal.

Carroll, a former magazine columnist who is now 82, accused Trump of attacking her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, and later defaming her on his Truth Social website in a 2022 post denying her allegations.

In 2023, a New York jury awarded Carroll the damages over her claim. Trump denied the allegations.

Trump put the damages into a court-controlled account shortly after the verdict, and it was held there while the appeals process played out.

Lawyers for Trump decried the judge’s ruling that he must pay, calling the case a “hoax” and “Witch Hunt” which they alleged had been funded by Democrats.