What credible court records exist for sexual‑misconduct lawsuits involving Donald Trump?
Executive summary
The most concrete, publicly available court records showing legal findings against Donald J. Trump concern the civil suits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, where a federal jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded damages that were later the subject of appellate decisions and additional jury awards [1] [2] [3]. Beyond Carroll, a handful of other women have filed suits or subpoenas that generated court filings — notably Summer Zervos’s defamation case and Jill Harth’s 1997 civil action — while many public accusations never produced filed complaints or resulted in settled or dropped litigation [4] [5] [6].
1. E. Jean Carroll: the clearest court record and multiple judgments
E. Jean Carroll filed civil litigation accusing Trump of sexual assault and later defamation; a federal jury in Manhattan found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and awarded approximately $5 million in May 2023, a decision memorialized in district-court opinions and major press coverage [1] [7]. Subsequent proceedings produced an additional jury award addressing defamation claims, with coverage reporting a later $83.3 million judgment in January 2024, and appellate briefing and rulings preserved the evidentiary and liability analyses that make Carroll’s cases the most extensively documented sexual‑misconduct litigation in which Trump has been held civilly liable [3] [8] [2]. Court filings in Carroll II also contain detailed briefing over the Adult Survivors Act, statute‑of‑limitations issues, and motions concerning admissibility of testimony from other women and the 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording [9] [10] [8].
2. Summer Zervos and defamation litigation in state court
Summer Zervos, a former Apprentice contestant, brought a defamation suit in New York state court after Trump publicly denied her allegations; New York courts allowed the case to proceed and issued orders requiring testimony and document production before Zervos later withdrew her case prior to Trump being deposed, meaning the docket reflects filings, subpoenas and judicial rulings though it did not culminate in a trial verdict [4] [5]. Those court filings are publicly referenced in law‑reporting and summaries that document the procedural posture, subpoenas for documents, and appeals allowing the suit to move forward [4] [11].
3. Older civil claims that were filed, settled or dropped (Jill Harth, Ivana Trump references)
Jill Harth sued in 1997 alleging sexual misconduct tied to business dealings with Trump; reporting and subsequent summaries say she later dropped the sexual‑harassment claim after settling a separate breach‑of‑contract component, and the underlying civil paperwork and settlement references remain part of the historical record rather than public trial findings [5] [6]. Media and biographical compilations also note Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce filing that included a rape allegation she later recanted, which appears in reporting and background legal summaries but did not produce a contemporaneous civil judgment against Trump [5] [11].
4. Allegations without court filings and evidentiary uses of other accusers in trials
Numerous women publicly accused Trump of misconduct across decades, but many did not file formal lawsuits; nevertheless, their accounts were used as evidentiary material in court, most prominently the admission of testimony from other accusers and the Access Hollywood recording in Carroll’s trial under rules allowing evidence of other sexual assaults in such cases — a contested but upheld evidentiary decision on appeal [8] [9]. Reporting makes clear that public allegations and books listing dozens of accusations exist, but press compilations are not substitutes for court dockets unless accompanied by filings, motions, verdicts or settlements [6] [12].
5. What the record shows and what it does not — a balanced reading
The verifiable, legally dispositive records that find Trump civilly liable center on the Carroll litigation and its appellate history, while several other lawsuits produced court filings, subpoenas and procedural rulings without trial verdicts in Trump’s disfavor [1] [2] [4]. At the same time, many widely reported accusations did not generate public court records or ended in private settlements or abandoned claims, a distinction mirrored in primary reporting and court documents; where source material does not show filed complaints or entered judgments, this account does not assert the falsity of those allegations but notes the absence of public court adjudication in the record provided [6] [5].