U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan has given writer E. Jean Carroll until Monday morning to file any objection she has to former President Donald Trump posting a $91 million bond to delay paying the $83 million a jury ordered at the conclusion of the defamation trial.
Virginia-based Federal Insurance Company is guaranteeing more than $91 million that can be paid to Ms. Carroll should President Trump’s appeal fail or is withdrawn.
Ms. Carroll’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.
On Substack, Ms. Carroll called the $91 million figure a “stupendous amount.”
$83 Million in Damages
On Jan. 29, a panel of nine jurors said President Trump must pay more than $83 million to Ms. Carroll in a defamation case she brought in 2019. The figure breaks down to $18.3 million in compensatory damages, which included an $11 million campaign to repair her reputation, $7.3 million for emotional harm, and $65 million in punitive damages.This was the first of two lawsuits Ms. Carroll brought against President Trump, but the second one to go to trial.
In 2019, Ms. Carroll alleged President Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. He denied the accusations in public statements, leading her to sue for defamation.
Last year, Ms. Carroll brought a sexual assault case against President Trump when New York state passed a law allowing such cases to be brought outside the statute of limitations. The lawsuit included additional statements President Trump made about Ms. Carroll, claiming her accusations were part of a publicity stunt to sell her book.
A jury found President Trump liable for “sexual battery” and awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million. President Trump is also appealing this case.
“The truth or falsity of Mr. Trump’s 2019 statements therefore depends—like the truth or falsity of his 2022 statement—on whether Ms. Carroll lied about Mr. Trump sexually assaulting her. The jury’s finding that she did not therefore is binding in this case and precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements,” the judge wrote. “Mr. Trump’s contrary arguments are all unpersuasive.”
Ms. Carroll had argued that “no reasonable person could believe that Trump acted with actual malice in October 2022 but lacked it in June 2019” in her request for the pre-trial ruling.
Attorneys for President Trump have objected multiple times to the judge’s blocking of additional witness testimony on the basis that those facts had already been tried.
President Trump maintains that he did not know Ms. Carroll, contradicting her story of their joking around as they visited the department store, and says that he never touched her.
On the last day of the well-attended trial, President Trump abruptly left the courtroom during the plaintiff’s closing arguments. He later returned, and then left again before the jury delivered the verdict.
