E. Jean Carroll, Carroll I, $83.3 million defamation verdict

On January 26, 2024, a federal jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York awarded E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages in the case known as Carroll I, *Carroll v. Trump*, No. 19-cv-11764. The award broke down to $18.3 million in compensatory damages, $11 million for the cost of a reputation-repair campaign, and $65 million in punitive damages. The verdict was based on statements Donald Trump made in June 2019, while serving as president, in which he denied Carroll's allegation that he had sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and called her account a fabrication.

The Carroll I trial was procedurally narrow: liability for defamation had been established by the prior Carroll II verdict on May 9, 2023, in which a different federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded $5 million. The 2024 jury was tasked only with determining damages for the 2019 statements. Trump testified for about three minutes before being cut off by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan for non-responsive answers; he then walked out of the courtroom during Carroll's closing argument.

To stay enforcement during appeal, Trump posted a bond of approximately $91.6 million, secured in part by Federal Insurance Company, a Chubb subsidiary. On September 8, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the judgment. The Second Circuit had earlier affirmed the Carroll II verdict on December 30, 2024 and denied en banc rehearing in June 2025. Trump filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court of the United States on the Carroll II case in November 2025; a separate cert petition is expected on Carroll I. The combined Carroll judgments total $88.3 million in damages plus bond and interest costs, the largest defamation award against any sitting or former U.S. president in the modern record.