Donald Trump has asked Judge Lewis Kaplan to freeze more than $5 million in court-held funds owed to E. Jean Carroll from her 2023 sexual abuse and defamation verdict, claiming that a pending Supreme Court rehearing petition should pause any disbursement The Guardian.

The money at issue originates from Trump himself. About six weeks after Carroll won her 2023 trial, Trump deposited the jury award plus 11 percent interest into an escrow account — a court-controlled holding account — as his appeals continued. This step did not constitute an admission of liability. With accrued interest, that account now holds roughly $5.8 million The Guardian.

The immediate catalyst was the Supreme Court's June 29, 2026 decision to reject Trump's appeal, a rejection known as a "denial of certiorari." Under a June 2023 agreement negotiated between the parties, this denial satisfied a key condition for releasing the funds. Carroll's lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, cited that agreement directly: it specified that funds would be released once certain definitive legal developments occurred, including a Supreme Court denial of certiorari The Guardian. Carroll's team moved quickly. On June 30, 2026—one day after the denial—they filed with Judge Kaplan in the Southern District of New York asking him to order the funds released UPI CNN.

Trump's response came a week later. His lawyers pointed to a July 6, 2026 petition asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its own denial—a rehearing petition, a procedurally rare move rarely granted—and argued that releasing the funds before that petition is resolved would cause "irreparable harm" to their client The Guardian. They also contended that Carroll's team had misinterpreted the 2023 agreement, asserting it "does not permit collection while the rehearing petition remains unresolved." On that basis, Trump asked Kaplan either to deny Carroll's release motion outright or to postpone ruling on it.

Procedurally, Trump has not prevailed so far. A federal judge already rejected a Trump request to delay his response to Carroll's release motion USA Today, and by July 6, 2026 another effort to stall the payout had also been denied Yahoo News. CNBC's July 1 reporting confirms the sum at stake: Carroll is seeking release of nearly $5.8 million held since the 2023 verdict CNBC.

This is not a fight about whether Trump owes Carroll the money. Lower courts had rejected Trump's underlying appeal before the case reached the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has now declined to hear his challenge, and rehearing petitions succeed only rarely. What Trump is litigating is narrower: the contractual interpretation of the 2023 escrow agreement, specifically whether a rehearing petition counts as an obstacle to release under the terms the two sides agreed to years earlier.

The formal case—Carroll v. Trump, 1:22-cv-10016 in the Southern District of New York, called "Carroll II" to distinguish it from her earlier defamation suit—was filed November 24, 2022, with final judgment entered by May 11, 2023 CourtListener. The appeal was docketed at the Second Circuit as case 23-793 CourtListener. Activity has continued past judgment, with the most recent filing dated July 4, 2026 CourtListener, reflecting the ongoing satellite litigation over the escrowed funds.

Judge Kaplan's interpretation of the 2023 escrow agreement—how he reads the phrase "definitive legal developments" in a context neither side anticipated when they drafted the language—will determine whether the funds are released. The pattern of successive denials of Trump's delay requests suggests judicial skepticism toward procedural stalling, though whether that carries into the release ruling itself remains an open question.