The ruling effectively ends Trump's challenge to the verdict, meaning Carroll is now set to receive the $5 million that has been held in a court-controlled account since 2023.US President Donald Trump has suffered a major legal setback after the US Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal against the $5 million verdict awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll. The decision leaves intact a jury's finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the mid-1990s and later defamed her by publicly denying her allegations.The Supreme Court issued a brief order on Monday declining to take up the case, without providing any explanation or recording any dissent. The ruling effectively ends Trump's challenge to the verdict, meaning Carroll is now set to receive the $5 million that has been held in a court-controlled account since 2023.Trump's lawyers had argued that the civil trial was unfair because the jury heard testimony from two other women who accused him of sexual abuse and was shown the 2005 "Access Hollywood" recording in which Trump made explicit remarks about women. They claimed those decisions unfairly influenced the jury and distracted Trump from his duties as president. In response to Monday's ruling, Trump's legal team called the case a "Democrat-funded travesty" and described it as another "witch hunt", insisting the president would continue fighting what it called "liberal lawfare".What is the case?Carroll, a longtime magazine columnist, first sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he denied her claim that he sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at New York's Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s.She later filed a second lawsuit in 2022 after New York temporarily allowed survivors of sexual assault to bring civil claims over previously time-barred incidents. That case went to trial first, and in 2023 a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and for defaming her when he denied her allegations. The jury awarded her $5 million in damages.