Coverage spread: 2 sources — 1 left · 1 center
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What happened
President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice separately petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to review and overturn an $83.3 million jury verdict awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll in a defamation case. The award stemmed from a January 2024 verdict by a Manhattan federal jury, which found Trump liable for defaming Carroll in 2019 when he denied, while serving as president, that he had sexually abused her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had already upheld that verdict, and a three-judge panel, as well as the full appeals court, previously rejected Trump’s request to rehear the case based on presidential immunity claims.
Trump’s lawyers argue that because he made the disputed statements — a press release and remarks to reporters from the White House — while in office and defending himself against attacks on his fitness for the presidency, he should be shielded by presidential immunity. They point to the Supreme Court’s own 2024 ruling on presidential immunity, which found that “most of a President’s public communications” qualify as official acts protected from liability. Trump’s filing calls the case unprecedented, stating it is “the first case in our Nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a President for his conduct in office,” and warns that letting the verdict stand would harm not just Trump but future presidents and “the Nation that the Presidency was designed to serve.”
Separately, both Trump’s petition and the DOJ’s petition invoke the Westfall Act, a federal law shielding government employees from certain lawsuits over conduct performed in their official duties. They argue Trump should have been allowed to substitute the U.S. government as the defendant in place of himself. Had that substitution been permitted, the case would likely have been dismissed outright, since the federal government cannot be sued for defamation. Carroll’s legal team declined to comment on the new petitions.
How the coverage compares
NBC News and CNBC both lay out the same core legal arguments — presidential immunity and the Westfall Act substitution claim — and both quote Trump’s filing describing the case as unprecedented and the award as excessive. NBC News focuses more heavily on the immunity argument and includes direct quotes from Trump’s team about the risk to the presidency, plus detail on the prior unsuccessful attempts to raise immunity at the appeals court level, including the denied rehearing request in April and the panel’s rejection in September.
CNBC places more emphasis on the fact that both Trump personally and the DOJ filed separate petitions, underscoring that the government itself is backing the immunity and substitution arguments. CNBC also provides more context connecting this filing to the related, earlier Carroll case — the 2023 jury verdict that found Trump liable for sexual abuse and for defaming Carroll in 2022 statements, which resulted in a separate $5 million award. CNBC notes that the Supreme Court already declined last month to hear Trump’s appeal in that earlier case, and that Carroll has since collected the $5 million plus more than $600,000 in interest from a court-held fund, even as Trump pursues a longshot request asking the Court to reconsider that rejection.
Both outlets agree on the sequence of litigation: the 2019 statements denying the assault led to the defamation suit and $83.3 million verdict now under appeal, while the 2022 statements led to the separate case resulting in the $5 million verdict already paid out. Neither outlet reports that the Supreme Court has decided whether to take up the new petitions, and neither source indicates a timeline for when the Court might rule on whether to hear the case.
Why it matters
The case tests the boundaries of presidential immunity established by the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling, which shielded presidents from criminal liability for official acts but did not directly address civil defamation damages tied to statements made from the White House. Trump’s lawyers argue that allowing this verdict to stand would expose future presidents to crippling financial liability simply for defending themselves against public accusations while in office, potentially chilling how presidents respond to attacks on their fitness for office. If the Supreme Court accepts the case and rules in Trump’s favor, it could effectively erase Carroll’s damages award and set a new precedent limiting when sitting presidents can be sued personally for statements made in their official capacity — a question with implications well beyond this specific case, given the frequency with which presidents publicly respond to allegations against them.
Sources
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