U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media before departing for a state visit to Britain, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 16, 2025. REUTERS Ken Cedeno
A federal appeals court handed President Donald Trump a loss on Wednesday in his quest for the entire court to re-hear his appeal in the $83 million E. Jean Carroll civil defamation case.
CNN reports that the court’s decision now allows the president to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his claims arguing presidential immunity. The high court established broad criminal immunity for all presidents in 2024 for official acts.
A panel of judges earlier had affirmed a jury verdict that Trump had defamed Carroll in 2022 when he “denied her allegations of sexual assault, said she wasn’t his type, and suggested she made up the allegations to sell copies of her new book,” according to CNN.
Separately, the following year, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation “over an alleged assault that occurred in the mid-1990s at a New York department store and for statements he made in 2019 denying it happened.”
Trump has argued that the U.S. Department of Justice should have been substituted for him as the defendant. Since the DOJ cannot be sued for defamation, the case would have been ended.
Courthouse News adds that the majority of judges on Wednesday “concluded the court had correctly held that presidential immunity is waivable and that had Trump indeed waived it in the Carroll case.”
“If any other litigant had failed to raise an affirmative defense in this way, there would be no question as to whether he waived his right to assert it,” U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin wrote.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
