NEW YORK — A New York appeals court on Monday upheld the $83.3 million judgment against President Trump for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of rape during his first term based on the “extraordinary and egregious” facts of the case.

In a 70-page, unsigned decision, three justices for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals found Trump had “recklessly” put Carroll at risk in verbal attacks that “continued throughout the pendency of the nearly five-year litigation and became more extreme and frequent as the trial approached.”

“Trump’s statements had a domino effect,” the decision read.

“Carroll was subjected to ongoing and prolific harassment as a result of these statements, including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury.”

The court found that Trump had failed to make a case for the federal appeals court to revisit its previous ruling that his rejected his presidential immunity claims because he raised them too late.

Trump’s lawyers had partly argued that the July 2024 Supreme Court decision granting the president sweeping legal protections should get him off the hook, as the case concerned comments he made while he was president.

“Trump had the opportunity and incentive to raise this challenge in his initial appeal and failed to do so; hence, he may not do so now,” the decision read.

In a statement, Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, lauded the ruling and said, “We look forward to an end to the appellate process so that justice will finally be done.”

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team, in a statement, described the litigation as the “Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes” and signaled the president would appeal to the Supreme Court.

“President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he is focusing on his mission to Make America Great Again,” Aaron Harison said.

The appeals court also affirmed several rulings by Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over two lawsuits Carroll won against Trump, including his instructions to the jury about Trump sexually abusing Carroll with his fingers in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Ave. in the mid-1990s, which the panel found were consistent with evidence about the nature of the assault.

Carroll first sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after she publicly levied rape allegations, and he said she was a liar and “not my type” in a case that would become plagued by appeals.

The former Elle advice columnist brought a second suit in 2022, including the claim Trump attacked her in a Midtown department store in 1996, a lawsuit made possible by the passage of New York’s Adult Survivors Act.

A jury awarded her $5 million in that case in May 2023, finding Trump sexually abused her in the dressing room and defamed her on his social media site Truth Social after leaving office, which the 2nd Circuit upheld last year.

After the first trial, Kaplan ruled Trump was also liable for defaming Carroll during his first term — leaving the second jury only to decide the damages due in the first suit.

The jury award encompassed $65 million in punitive damages, $7.3 million for emotional harm suffered by the 81-year-old Carroll, who testified about living in paranoia and fear amid thousands of death threats, and $11 million for reputational harm.

Carroll has yet to receive payment in either case as the president continues to appeal.

Carroll’s lawyers had asked the jury to come up with a large enough number to stop Trump from denigrating her, as he had before, during, and after the May 2023 trial, including in a town hall with CNN in the the wake of the verdict when he called her a “wack job” to an audience of millions.

“Upon review of the evidence, we agree with the district court that the jury was entitled to find that Trump would not stop defaming Carroll unless he was subjected to a substantial financial penalty,” the 2nd Circuit’s Monday decision read.

“For nearly five years, Trump never wavered or relented in his public attacks on Carroll,” the court later wrote. “He also continued these same attacks during the trial itself. In one such statement, issued two days into the trial, Trump proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll ‘a thousand times.’”

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