President Trump's legal team filed a petition for rehearing at the Supreme Court this week, seeking to overturn the justices' June 29 decision to reject his appeal of a $5 million civil judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case.
The Supreme Court declined to hear Trump's initial petition without opinion, allowing the jury verdict to stand. The 2023 verdict found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll, a magazine writer who alleged he assaulted her in the 1990s. Trump has consistently denied the allegations.
Trump's lawyers, led by Michael Martinich-Sauter, are not arguing that the Court made an error in its June decision. Instead, they're asking the justices to revisit the matter because Trump plans to file a separate Supreme Court petition in another Carroll defamation case that will raise questions about presidential immunity for official presidential statements.
The filing references Carroll v. Trump, a case pending in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that it raises "vital questions concerning Presidential immunity for official statements." Trump's legal team contends that Carroll's lawyers introduced Trump's official presidential statements as evidence during the trial in the $5 million case.
The lawyers cite the Supreme Court's 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, which expanded presidential immunity protections, as establishing precedent that bears directly on whether those statements should have been admissible evidence.
The petition asks the Court to either grant rehearing or hold the case in abeyance while the presidential immunity question gets litigated in the related Carroll case working through the appeals process.
Under Supreme Court rules, rehearing after a denial of certiorari is granted only in narrow circumstances: when intervening circumstances have a substantial or controlling effect on the case, or when new grounds exist that were not previously presented to the Court.
The bar is deliberately high. The Supreme Court receives thousands of petitions annually and can hear only a fraction. Trump's application faces long odds.
Trump's team initially filed a rehearing petition on Monday that was rejected because it contained technical errors requiring correction. The corrected version was resubmitted Wednesday.
The original denial came without the Court taking up the case, which typically signals that a majority found no substantial federal question. Filing a rehearing petition days later, anchored primarily on a separate case that hasn't even reached the Supreme Court yet, represents a calculated attempt to keep the door theoretically open.
Court observers have noted that such linking strategies occasionally succeed when the intervening case presents genuinely new legal developments. However, the Trump v. United States decision was decided in June 2024, well before the Carroll certiorari petition was filed and denied in June 2026.
The rehearing petition remains pending. Given the established standards for such petitions, legal analysts broadly expect the Court to deny the request.
Meanwhile, the underlying $5 million judgment stands. This represents the civil liability phase of Trump's legal entanglement with Carroll. Separate from this case is another Carroll defamation action, which Trump's team now plans to take to the Supreme Court on the presidential immunity angle.
