This article was originally published on Crafting Your Home. A human contributor also wrote and edited the post.
President Donald Trump’s long legal battle with writer E. Jean Carroll has taken another turn, and this time the fight is not over whether he owes her money, but whether she should have to hand back what she has already received.
Less than two weeks after a court released roughly $5.6 million to Carroll, Trump’s legal team filed an emergency request asking a federal appeals court to force her to return it while they continue trying to overturn the underlying case.
The payment traces back to a 2023 federal jury verdict finding Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll over an encounter she said happened in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, the Manhattan department store, sometime in the mid-1990s.
Trump has denied the allegations from the very beginning and has continued to deny them throughout years of appeals, but the jury’s finding has held up through every level of review it has faced since.
That verdict is separate from a second, larger judgment against Trump of $83.3 million tied to another defamation claim from Carroll, meaning the two cases have moved through the court system on parallel but distinct tracks.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered the funds released from the court-controlled escrow account where the money had been sitting since Trump deposited it years earlier to satisfy the judgment.
In doing so, Kaplan did not mince words about how long the process had already dragged on. He wrote that Trump had spent years “stalling” the case, and pointed out that even the U.S. Supreme Court, which includes three justices Trump himself appointed, had declined to take up his challenge and let the verdict stand.
Why Trump’s Legal Team Wants the Money Sent Back
With the appeals process at the Supreme Court level now closed off, Trump’s attorneys have shifted their strategy to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asking the court to order Carroll to return the $5.6 million while they pursue further legal action against the verdict itself.
The request is structured as an emergency injunction, a legal tool typically reserved for situations where a party argues that immediate harm will occur if a court does not act quickly, which underscores just how urgently Trump’s team is trying to keep the underlying legal fight alive even after the money has already changed hands.
This latest filing did not sit well with Carroll’s legal team, who responded with sharp language of their own in their court filings.
Attorneys for Carroll described the request as “procedurally improper” and “substantively meritless,” arguing that Trump is essentially trying to relitigate a fight he has already lost multiple times over.
Their filings characterized the emergency injunction as one more attempt to delay the consequences of a judgment that has already survived years of appeals, rather than a genuine legal argument with a real chance of success.
Judge Kaplan’s earlier ruling had already anticipated much of this dynamic. In ordering the funds released, he emphasized that a jury had unanimously found Trump liable and awarded Carroll damages accordingly, and that the case had been drawn out far longer than the underlying facts warranted.
His frustration with the pace of the litigation was evident in his written order, and Carroll’s team has since pointed back to that language as evidence that Trump’s newest filing is simply a continuation of the same delay tactics the judge had already called out by name.
Trump Calls the Case Politically Motivated
Trump has been consistent in how he frames the entire legal saga, both in this latest filing and in his public statements following the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear his case.
On his Truth Social platform, he described the lawsuit as a “Fake Case” and said he intended to keep fighting what he characterized as the “weaponization” of the legal system against him.
That language echoes years of similar statements from Trump about the Carroll litigation, in which he has repeatedly argued the case was politically driven rather than grounded in the facts presented at trial.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team offered a similarly pointed response when asked about the situation, dismissing the lawsuit in a statement as a politically motivated attack rather than a legitimate legal proceeding.
That framing has remained a constant throughout the years-long dispute, even as the case has moved through multiple rounds of appeals, a Second Circuit panel review, and now a request to the Supreme Court that was ultimately turned away.
Throughout the process, Trump has not testified in his own defense at trial, and has instead relied almost entirely on appellate arguments to challenge the jury’s findings after the fact.
Carroll, for her part, has largely let her attorneys speak for her at each stage of the case, with her legal team consistently framing every new filing from Trump’s side as another attempt to avoid a result that has already been thoroughly tested in court.
Her lawyers have pointed to the fact that the verdict has been reviewed and upheld by multiple judges across different stages of appeal, including a full panel review at the Second Circuit that left the original decision intact by a wide margin, as evidence that the case is settled as far as the courts are concerned, even if Trump continues to contest it publicly.
What Happens Next in the Years-Long Legal Fight
For now, the ball is in the Second Circuit’s court. The judges there will need to decide whether to grant Trump’s request for an emergency injunction ordering Carroll to return the $5.6 million, a decision that could come quickly given the emergency nature of the filing, or reject it outright and let the current outcome stand while Trump pursues whatever legal options remain available to him.
Given how the case has played out at every previous stage, with courts consistently declining to disturb the jury’s original findings, legal observers following the case have noted that Trump’s latest request faces a steep uphill climb.
Regardless of how the Second Circuit rules on this particular motion, the broader legal fight between Trump and Carroll shows no sign of fully concluding anytime soon.
The case has already stretched across a Manhattan federal courtroom, multiple rounds of appellate review, and a Supreme Court that ultimately chose not to weigh in, and each new filing appears to open another chapter rather than close the book on the dispute.
Carroll has repeatedly said through her attorneys that she considers the matter settled by the jury’s verdict, while Trump has continued to insist publicly that the fight is far from over.
What remains clear is that the money at the center of this latest dispute has already left the court-controlled escrow account and reached Carroll directly, a detail that adds a layer of real-world urgency to Trump’s request beyond the usual back-and-forth of appellate litigation.
Whether the Second Circuit views that as reason enough to act quickly, or as further proof that Trump is simply trying to undo a result the courts have already upheld multiple times, will determine what happens next in one of the highest-profile legal battles of Trump’s time in office.
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