US court refuses to hear Trump’s appeal of E Jean Carroll $83m defamation case ⁠21%

By Guardian staff⁠41% agency⁠0%

4/30/2026, 12:21:58 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 8 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Confirmation Bias, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 20.9% saturation with 150 hits. Analysis detected 579 faulty-reasoning hits from 718 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 34.9% and a BS Rank of ⁠21% (17,420 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 79.60% of the article peer group.

A federal appeals court has announced it will not grant a rare meeting of its active judges to hear an appeal of the $83m civil case verdict against Donald Trump for defaming magazine advice columnist E Jean Carroll over a forced sexual encounter three decades ago. 
The second US circuit court of appeals was divided late on Wednesday in its decision, ultimately, to reject proceeding to a so-called en banc hearing, a rare meeting of all of its judges to consider a conclusion. 
The development came almost 18 months after Trump appealed, shortly after winning election to a second term in the White House, to the US supreme court against a decision by a separate jury. 
That jury awarded $5m to Carroll after concluding that Trump had sexually abused her in a department store dressing room in New York in 1996 and, much later, defamed her. 
The highest US court has not yet declared whether it will be willing to hear the case. 
Lawyers for the US president did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that her client was “eager for this case, originally filed in 2019, to be over so that she can finally obtain justice”. 
After a three-judge second circuit panel last September rejected Trump’s appeal of the $83m verdict in New York in January 2024, an appeals judge asked the other Manhattan appeals jurists to hear the case. 
The second circuit said on Wednesday evening that a majority of 12 judges who considered Trump’s request voted against a rehearing before all the judges while a minority voted in favor of the en banc procedure. 
The judge, Denny Chin, wrote that it was the fourth time the second circuit had denied a request for all judges to hear an appeal in the case. 
He noted that Carroll first publicly asserted in 2019 in a memoir that Trump had sexually abused her in the 1990s in the dressing room of the luxury Bergdorf Goodman department store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. 
Trump then claimed he had never met her, called it a false accusation, and said Carroll was lying and that “she’s not my type”, in an interview. 
Carroll sued him for defamation in November 2019. 
Trump did not attend a May 2023 trial when a jury found that he had sexually abused Carroll and later defamed her. 
But he briefly testified at a second trial in January 2024 in which a jury awarded Carroll $83m for defamation. 
Chin defended the appeals court’s decision to uphold the large defamation award. 
“The record showed that Trump made multiple statements over many years accusing Carroll of lying for political and financial gain, and suggesting that Carroll was too unattractive for Trump to have sexually assaulted her,” he wrote. 
“As a result of Trump’s statements, Carroll was harassed and humiliated, subjected to death threats, and feared for her physical safety for years. 
And Trump showed no remorse, continuing his attacks against Carroll during and after two federal trials, and even proclaiming two days into the first trial in the Carroll case that he would continue to defame her ‘a thousand times’,” Chin said. 
Three circuit judges – Steven J Menashi, Michael H Park and Debra Ann Livingston – voted for the full second circuit to hear the appeal. 
In a dissent written by Menashi, they agreed that the appeals panel that heard the case should have let the United States be substituted for Trump as the defendant after the attorney general certified that he was acting in the “scope of his office or employment” when the claim arose during his first term in the White House, after winning the 2016 presidential election. 
And they said Trump should have been able to argue that he was protected by presidential immunity. 
They also agreed that Trump should be granted a new trial and concluded that the size of the award for defamation was “grossly excessive”. 
“Put together, these proceedings represent a manifest miscarriage of justice,” Menashi wrote. 
But those dissenters were outvoted by the majority. 
The Associated Press contributed reporting 
This article was updated on 30 April 2026 to clarify the judges’ vote against a rehearing of the case. 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 9.2%Guardian staff: 2.3%the Guardian: 3.7%Confirmation Bias9.2%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 1.1%the Guardian: 0.6%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.7%the Guardian: 3.1%Availability Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.8%the Guardian: 1.2%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.4%the Guardian: 1.0%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.3%the Guardian: 1.6%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 20.9%Guardian staff: 8.8%the Guardian: 6.1%Framing Effect20.9%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.6%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 6.3%Guardian staff: 0.8%the Guardian: 0.6%Status Quo Bias6.3%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 1.7%the Guardian: 2.5%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.2%the Guardian: 2.1%Pessimism Bias0.0%This article: 16.9%Guardian staff: 10.7%the Guardian: 10.4%Negativity Bias16.9%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.5%the Guardian: 1.6%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 1.9%Guardian staff: 0.2%the Guardian: 1.4%Fundamental Attribution Error1.9%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.7%the Guardian: 0.3%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.3%the Guardian: 1.3%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.7%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 3.2%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 1.1%the Guardian: 0.3%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 7.4%Guardian staff: 1.5%the Guardian: 1.2%Recency Bias7.4%This article: 5.0%Guardian staff: 1.0%the Guardian: 0.4%Primacy Effect5.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.9%the Guardian: 2.0%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.6%Straw Man0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 5.5%the Guardian: 3.8%Appeal to Authority0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.4%the Guardian: 1.7%False Dilemma0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 1.1%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 1.8%the Guardian: 6.3%Hasty Generalization0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.2%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.7%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 13.1%Guardian staff: 6.8%the Guardian: 5.6%Appeal to Emotion13.1%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.9%the Guardian: 0.9%Begging the Question0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 1.8%the Guardian: 2.9%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.4%the Guardian: 0.4%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.2%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.4%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.3%the Guardian: 3.1%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.3%the Guardian: 1.6%Ambiguity (Equivocation)0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.2%the Guardian: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.3%the Guardian: 0.3%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.6%the Guardian: 1.6%Unattributed Quote0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 1.0%the Guardian: 1.1%Quote-first Misdirection0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 3.0%the Guardian: 10.4%Biased Writer Voice0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.1%the Guardian: 1.8%Indoctrination0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 3.1%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.3%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff: 0.3%the Guardian: 1.0%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

718 words analyzed.

Speakers

4speakers44%attributed speech402writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 14 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 46 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 37 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 33 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 30 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 17 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 14 words • 0.0% coverageRoberta Kaplan • 30 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 34 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 36 words • 0.0% coverageDenny Chin • 28 words • 0.0% coverageDenny Chin • 36 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 27 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 8 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 22 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 20 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 12 words • 0.0% coverageDenny Chin • 36 words • 0.0% coverageDenny Chin • 23 words • 0.0% coverageDenny Chin • 41 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 25 words • 0.0% coverageSteven J Menashi • 64 words • 0.0% coverageSteven J Menashi • 17 words • 0.0% coverageSteven J Menashi • 24 words • 0.0% coverageSteven J Menashi • 12 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 8 words • 0.0% coverageAssociated Press • 5 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 19 words • 0.0% coverage
Selected voice

Roberta Kaplan

100%flagged-word coverage
30 attributed words9.5% of attributed speech65% writer coverage

No manipulation-pattern hits were found in this speaker's attributed words or the writer's voice.

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.