Donald Trump has agreed to dismiss his appeal of the $5 million verdict in E Jean Carroll's 2023 sexual abuse and defamation civil trial. The second circuit revealed the stipulation Tuesday: Trump withdraws his stay motion, the appeal is dismissed with prejudice, and the procedural war over this particular sum is finished. The filing is a formality draped in finality. The supreme court declined to review Trump's appeal on June 29. Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered disbursement on July 8. Less than an hour later, Trump asked the second circuit for a stay — which was denied. The court-held funds, swollen to $5.8 million with accrued interest, were released on July 9. Trump has been fighting over money that was already gone. The legal architecture here matters. Dismissal with prejudice means this specific appeal cannot be refiled. Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani called it "a final nail in the coffin" — there is no remaining procedural mechanism for Trump to claw back the $5 million. The supreme court had already rejected a rehearing request in August, making the second circuit filing an acknowledgment of an outcome that was already locked. The larger fight remains live. Trump is separately asking the supreme court to overturn the $83 million defamation verdict from Carroll's January 2024 civil trial. That case presents a significantly higher financial exposure and a different legal posture. The $5 million resolution removes one front but leaves the more consequential battle unresolved. Trump's legal team responded with campaign rhetoric — "Witch Hunts," "Democrat-funded travesty," "Carroll Hoaxes" — language calibrated for political consumption rather than legal argument. The gap between the legal filing (capitulation) and the public statement (defiance) is itself informative: the litigation strategy and the political strategy have fully diverged. The pattern is worth naming. Trump exhausted every available procedural avenue — district court, circuit court, supreme court, rehearing petition — before conceding. This is not unusual litigation behavior, but the duration and public framing converted a civil judgment into years of political narrative fuel. The legal system functioned as designed; the question is whether the delay itself constituted a form of extraction from the plaintiff. For the judiciary, this is a clean outcome: a jury verdict was rendered, upheld on appeal, and enforced. The $83 million case will test whether that pattern holds at a scale where political pressure intensifies proportionally.
