By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn a $5 million verdict in favor of E. Jean Carroll ​in a case in which a jury found him liable for sexually abusing the former magazine columnist and then defaming her.
The justices ‌turned away Trump’s appeal after a lower court upheld the 2023 jury verdict and rejected Trump’s arguments that the trial was unfair because the judge impermissibly let jurors hear evidence of his alleged past sexual misconduct.

Trump has been battling Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, ever since she published an excerpt from her memoir in 2019 in which she alleged that Trump ​had raped her around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan. Trump denied Carroll’s claims and asserted that she lied about ​the accusations both in 2019 while he was still serving his first term as president, and again in 2022 when ⁠he was out of office.

Trump expressed disappointment in the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the appeal and called Carroll’s lawsuit “a Fake Case.”
“I will continue the fight ​against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength. This Case is really against the United ​States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another President, or Candidate to be!” Trump wrote on social media.

Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said in a statement that the Supreme Court had affirmed “once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict” that Trump sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll.

“His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed, ​and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions,” Kaplan said.

Trump’s Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation targeting Carroll, as it has against several ​other adversaries of the Republican president. The investigation, disclosed in May, was focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony tied to the two civil lawsuits that she won against Trump.
‘NOT ‌MY TYPE’

The ⁠case that led to the $5 million verdict concerned Trump’s statements in 2022 when he called Carroll’s claim a “hoax” and a “con job” in a post on social media.