Trump asks Supreme Court to overturn E Jean Carroll verdict

Jean Carroll at a Manhattan federal court

President Donald Trump is asking the US Supreme Court to review the $5m (£3.6m) civil case that found he defamed and sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll.

He has repeatedly claimed that the judge who oversaw the civil trial, Lewis Kaplan, improperly allowed evidence to be presented that hurt how the jury viewed Trump.

A federal appeals court agreed with the jury's verdict last year and said Kaplan did not make errors that would warrant a new trial.

A New York jury awarded Ms Carroll damages over her civil claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, and then branded the incident a hoax on social media. He denied the allegations.

The Supreme Court is now Trump's last hope of overturning the unanimous jury's verdict. Whether the top US court will take the case up is unclear.

A federal appeals court declined to rehear Trump's challenge to it in June.

Trump's comments about the jury's findings in the case led a separate jury to order him to pay Ms Carroll $83m for defaming her. A panel of federal judges denied his appeal of that decision in September, and Trump has now taken the next step in trying to have it overturned by asking the full bench of judges at a federal appeals court to review the case.

In the petition to the Supreme Court, Trump's lawyers argued Kaplan should not have let jurors see the 2005 Access Hollywood tape that showed the president saying he groped and kissed women.

"There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation," they wrote about Ms Carroll's allegations.

"Instead, Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th president, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself."

Roberta Kaplan, Ms Carroll's attorney, told the BBC she had no comment on the Supreme Court appeal.

While Trump was found to have defamed and sexually abused Ms Carroll, the jury rejected her claim of rape as defined in New York's penal code.

Ms Carroll, a former magazine columnist who is now 81, sued Trump for attacking her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room in Manhattan. The defamation stemmed from Trump's post on his Truth Social platform in 2022 denying her claim.

Trump has said Ms Carroll was "not my type" and that she lied.