The E. Jean Carroll judgment moved a decisive step closer to being paid this week, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up President Donald Trump’s appeal. With the nation’s highest court stepping aside, Carroll’s legal team wasted little time asking a federal judge to force Trump to hand over the $5 million a Manhattan jury said he owes her.

The Supreme Court’s decision came without a single dissent, effectively ending Trump’s bid to overturn the verdict and the accompanying judgment that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

Carroll’s Attorneys Push for Payment

On Tuesday, Carroll’s lawyers filed a fresh request urging the court to release the money. According to the filing, Trump’s attorneys had reached out to ask whether Carroll would agree to yet another delay so the president could petition the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear the case.

Roberta Kaplan, who represents Carroll, made clear her client had no interest in prolonging the fight. She argued that after four years of litigation stretching through every tier of the federal court system, the case had finally reached its end. Under the terms of an earlier stipulation and order, she wrote, Carroll is now entitled to collect what the judgment guarantees.

Kaplan’s message was blunt: it is time for Trump to pay.

The Terms Trump Agreed To

A central point in Carroll’s filing involves the conditions Trump himself accepted earlier in the process. To pause enforcement of the judgment while his appeal played out, Trump agreed that the funds held in the court’s account would be released once specific conditions were met.

Those conditions, Kaplan noted, were satisfied the moment the Supreme Court denied his petition for certiorari. In other words, the very deal Trump struck to buy time now clears the path for Carroll to be paid. The $5 million has been sitting in escrow, waiting on the outcome of his appeal.

Trump Vows to Keep Fighting

Trump, unsurprisingly, did not treat the ruling as the end of the road. In a post on his social media platform following the court’s rejection, he pledged to keep battling what he described as a weaponized legal campaign against him. He dismissed the defamation claim as ridiculous and promised to fight on with everything he had.

Whether that resistance carries any legal weight remains doubtful, given that the Supreme Court has already declined to intervene and the funds are contractually poised for release.

How the Case Reached This Point

The dispute traces back to a 2023 verdict, when a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a dressing room at the department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. The same jury concluded that Trump defamed Carroll in 2022 when he publicly denied her account, and it awarded her $5 million in damages.

That money has remained untouched in escrow ever since, held in limbo while Trump exhausted his appeals.

The Arguments Trump Raised on Appeal

In challenging the verdict, Trump’s legal team focused on several evidentiary decisions made during the trial. Among their chief complaints was the judge’s decision to let jurors see a portion of the widely known Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump was recorded describing crude behavior toward women. Trump has long brushed off those remarks as mere locker room talk.

His appeal also objected to testimony from two other women, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, both of whom said Trump had sexually assaulted them. Trump has denied their accounts as well.

None of those arguments persuaded the Supreme Court to step in, leaving the original judgment intact and Carroll’s team pressing for the payment they say is long overdue.