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apnews.com
Judge denies Trump relief from $83.3 million defamation judgment
By LARRY NEUMEISTER

Updated 3:17 PM PST, March 7, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — The federal judge who oversaw a New York defamation trial
that resulted in an $83.3 million award to a longtime magazine columnist
who says Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s refused Thursday to relieve
the ex-president from the verdict's financial pinch.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan told Trump's attorney in a written order that he
won't delay deadlines for posting a bond that would ensure 80-year-old
writer E. Jean Carroll can be paid the award if the judgment survives
appeals.

The judge said any financial harm to the Republican front-runner for the presidency results from his slow response to the late-January verdict in
the defamation case resulting from statements Trump made about Carroll
while he was president in 2019 after she revealed her claims against him
in a memoir.

At the time, Trump accused her of making up claims that he raped her in
the dressing room of a luxury Manhattan department store in spring 1996. A
jury last May at a trial Trump did not attend awarded Carroll $5 million
in damages, finding that Trump sexually abused her but did not rape her as
rape was defined under New York state law. It also concluded that he
defamed her in statements in October 2022.

Trump attended the January trial and briefly testified, though his remarks
were severely limited by the judge, who had ruled that the jury had to
accept the May verdict and was only to decide how much in damages, if any, Carroll was owed for Trump's 2019 statements. In the statements, Trump
claimed he didn't know Carroll and accused her of making up lies to sell
books and harm him politically.

Trump's lawyers have challenged the judgment, which included a $65 million punitive award, saying there was a “strong probability” it will be reduced
or eliminated on appeal.

In his order Thursday, Kaplan noted that Trump's lawyers waited 25 days to
seek to delay when a bond must be posted. The judgment becomes final
Monday.

“Mr. Trump's current situation is a result of his own dilatory actions,”
Kaplan wrote.

The judge noted that Trump's lawyers seek to delay execution of the jury
award until three days after Kaplan rules on their request to suspend the
jury award pending consideration of their challenges to the judgment
because preparations to post a bond could “impose irreparable injury in
the form of substantial costs.”

Kaplan, though, said the expense of ongoing litigation does not constitute irreparable injury.

“Nor has Mr. Trump made any showing of what expenses he might incur if
required to post a bond or other security, on what terms (if any) he could obtain a conventional bond, or post cash or other assets to secure payment
of the judgment, or any other circumstances relevant to the situation,”
the judge said.

Trump's attorney, Alina Habba, did not immediately comment.

Since the January verdict, a state court judge in New York in a separate
case has ordered Trump and his companies to pay $355 million in penalties
for a years long scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements
that inflated his wealth. With interest, he owes the state nearly $454
million.



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Anyone that isn't confused doesn't really
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