E. Jean Carroll's lawyers object to Trump's attempt to pause enforcement of $83.3M judgment in defamation trial
Attorneys for columnist E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Donald Trump for defamation, objected Thursday to the former president's attempt to pause enforcement of the $83.3 million judgment the jury ordered him to pay.
Trump had asked the court to stay enforcement of the monetary award while he appeals without requiring him to put cash in escrow or post bond.
If granted, that would leave Carroll with no assurance she would ever collect the money Trump now owes her, her attorneys said.
"The reasoning Trump offers in seeking this extraordinary relief boils down to nothing more than 'trust me,'" Carroll's attorneys wrote in a filing Thursday.
"He doesn't offer any information about his finances or the nature and location of his assets," they said. "He doesn’t specify what percentage of his assets are liquid or explain how Carroll might go about collecting."
Carroll's attorneys also noted that Trump failed to acknowledge the risks to his finances from the $454 million civil fraud judgment obtained by the New York attorney general.
A lawyer for the former president had requested that Judge Lewis Kaplan temporarily delay the judgment in the defamation case or permit Trump to post a bond for "an appropriate fraction" of the total damages. A New York appellate court on Wednesday rejected Trump's attempt to do the same kind of thing in the civil fraud case, denying Trump's attempt to freeze the judgment.
The ruling in the civil fraud case means, for now, that the former president is required to post a bond for hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming weeks. Defense attorneys had said Trump was prepared to post a $100 million bond, arguing he had no way to secure a higher amount without selling off some of his real estate.
Earlier this month, Kaplan declined to grant a stay of Trump's $83.3 million judgment in his defamation case and requested a written response from Carroll's lawyers.
"The Court declines to grant any stay, much less an unsecured stay, without first having afforded plaintiff a meaningful opportunity to be heard," Kaplan wrote in an order, setting a Thursday deadline for Carroll's response and a March 2 deadline for Trump's reply.
Carroll has vowed to use the judgment money on "something Donald Trump hates."
"If it'll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that's my intent," Carroll told George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America" in January, suggesting she would create a "fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump."
A jury had awarded Carroll over $83 million in damages to compensate her for two defamatory statements made by the former president in 2019 after she alleged Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996. A separate jury last year found that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her, awarding her $5 million.
Trump has repeatedly denied the allegation since 2019.
