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Background: Former president Donald Trump and legal team after court ordered award of $83.3M to E. Jean Carroll, inset. Background: Andrea Renault./STAR MAX/IPx 2024/Inset: AP Photo/John Minchillo.)
In response to Donald Trump‘s continued promises to a judge in New York that he will pay the $83.3 million he owes to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her — without posting security — Carroll’s lawyer has offered a taut reply: Once again, Trump offers nothing to credit him but his “unsubstantiated say so.”
The message came in a one-page letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan after the former president — already beset on all sides by indictments and legal dramas in Florida, Georgia, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere in New York City — asked for a third time to stay the execution of the defamation award to the veteran writer.
Trump’s attorneys Alina Habba and John Sauer have proposed that the court should give the defendant an unsecured 30-day delay to pay until all of his post-trial motions are resolved, or to allow him to post a reduced bond that would come in at little over $24.4 million.
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in the Monday letter to the judge that Trump’s latest filings are riddled with incorrect claims that it is she who “mischaracterized” existing Second Circuit case law on the enforcement of judgment without the posting of bond or another condition.
Not only has Trump once again offered “no alternative means other than his own unsubstantiated say so that he will have the $83.3 million available when Carroll prevails on appeal,” Kaplan wrote, but when his lawyers pointed to a 2015 strip search case in Long Island to support their argument, they misinterpreted it.
Known as In re Nassau County Strip Search Cases, in that matter the Second Circuit stayed the enforcement of judgment without the posting of bond because the defendant was a government entity in that case and had demonstrated “the existence of appropriated funds, available for the purpose of paying judgments without substantial delay or other difficulty.”
This is “fully consistent with our position,” attorney Kaplan wrote, to seek out more than a mere “trust me” from Donald Trump.
In the Nassau case, the “alternative means” offered up to secure payment “consisted of a dedicated and readily collectible governmental appropriation.”
Trump offers nothing of the sort, “in stark contrast,” Kaplan wrote Monday.
Late Monday after Trump’s team made their proposal to delay payment until their post-trial motions were resolved, the judge weighed in, sharply noting that on Feb. 23, Trump had effectively said the same thing.
And yet, the judge wrote, “no post trial motions have been filed yet.”
