By Jonathan Stempel and Jack Queen
NEW YORK, July 8 (Reuters) – A Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday authorized the payment of $5.8 million in damages and interest to magazine writer E. Jean Carroll to satisfy a 2023 civil verdict in which a jury found President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.
Trump had deposited the funds in a court escrow account while he appealed the verdict, but the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29 declined to take up the case.
In a filing late on Tuesday night in Manhattan federal court, Trump’s lawyers said Carroll should wait until the Supreme Court hears Trump’s renewed bid to overturn the $5 million verdict, which has grown to about $5.8 million including interest.
The lawyers said Trump would be irreparably harmed and face “unrecoverable loss” if Carroll fulfills her stated intention to give away the money, because once she does the money likely could not be recovered.
They also said letting Carroll recover, only to have the Supreme Court grant a rehearing, would “undermine public confidence in an orderly judicial process” at a time when Trump’s supporters and some critics, according to his lawyers, voice “concerns about politically motivated weaponization of the legal system.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
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