A US judge ordered President Donald Trump on Wednesday to pay five million dollars to author E. Jean Carroll, after a civil jury found that he had sexually abused her and defamed her.
The US Supreme Court had last week declined to hear an appeal filed by Trump challenging the original verdict, issued in May 2023, which ordered him to pay two million dollars in compensation for the assault and three million dollars over statements in which he defamed the author.
By declining to hear the appeal, the ruling became final.
Carroll, 82, a former journalist and columnist, accused Trump of assaulting her in a department store in New York City in 1996.
In response to the accusations, which were published in a book in 2019, Trump described the author as "crazy", saying she had fabricated the story.
Federal judge Lewis Kaplan ordered on Wednesday that the five million dollars Trump had deposited with the court be disbursed, with the ruling also stipulating the payment of accumulated interest on the amount, the value of which was not specified.
In a separate defamation case in New York, Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million. That ruling was upheld on appeal, but its enforcement remains pending.
In late May, US media reported that Carroll herself had become the subject of a criminal investigation.
CNN and The New York Times reported that the investigation, opened by prosecutors at the Department of Justice, aims to determine whether Carroll gave false testimony under oath during several depositions related to the lawsuits filed against Trump.