Full federal appeals court won't rehear $83 million defamation verdict against Trump

NEW YORK (AP) — A divided federal appeals court said Wednesday it will not grant a rare meeting of its active judges to hear an appeal of an $83 million verdict against President Donald Trump for defaming a magazine advice columnist over an encounter three decades ago.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to reject a so-called “en banc” hearing comes several months after Trump appealed to the Supreme Court another jury’s decision to grant $5 million the writer, E. Jean Carroll, after concluding that he had sexually abused her in a department store dressing room in 1996 and later defamed her. The high court has not yet decided whether to hear the case.

Lawyers for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that her client was "eager for this case, originally filed in 2019, to be over so that she can finally obtain justice.”

After a three-judge 2nd Circuit panel rejected Trump's appeal of the $83 million verdict in September, an appeals judge asked the other Manhattan appeals jurists to hear the case.

The 2nd Circuit said Wednesday that five judges voted against a rehearing before all the judges while three judges voted in favor of the en banc.

Judge Denny Chin wrote that it was the fourth time the 2nd Circuit had denied a request for all judges to hear an appeal in the case.

He noted that Carroll first publicly asserted in 2019 in a memoir that Trump had sexually abused her in the 1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman store's dressing room.

Trump then claimed he had never met her, called it a false accusation and said “she's not my type” in an interview. Carroll sued him for defamation in November 2019.

Trump did not attend a May 2023 trial when a jury found that he had sexually abused Carroll and later defamed her. But he briefly testified at a second trial in January 2024 when a jury awarded Carroll $83 million for defamation.

Chin defended the appeals court's decision to uphold the large defamation award.

“The record showed that Trump made multiple statements over many years accusing Carroll of lying for political and financial gain, and suggesting that Carroll was too unattractive for Trump to have sexually assaulted her,” he wrote.

“As a result of Trump’s statements, Carroll was harassed and humiliated, subjected to death threats, and feared for her physical safety for years. And Trump showed no remorse, continuing his attacks against Carroll during and after two federal trials, and even proclaiming two days into the Carroll I trial that he would continue to defame her ‘a thousand times,’” Chin said.

Three circuit judges — Steven J. Menashi, Michael H. Park and Debra Ann Livingston — voted for the full 2nd Circuit to hear the appeal.

In a dissent written by Menashi, they agreed that the appeals panel that heard the case should have let the United States be substituted for Trump as the defendant after the attorney general certified that he was acting in the “scope of his office or employment” when the claim arose.

And they said Trump should have been able to argue that he was protected by presidential immunity.

They also agreed that Trump should be granted a new trial and concluded that the size of the award for defamation was “grossly excessive.”

“Put together, these proceedings represent a manifest miscarriage of justice,” Menashi wrote.