Former President Donald Trump’s attorney Alina Habba argued in a court filing Monday that the judge overseeing writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Trump had a conflict that resulted in Carroll receiving “preferential treatment” —but while Habba said she’ll try to use that to have the case and its $83 million verdict thrown out on appeal, legal experts say she’s unlikely to succeed.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump stands with his lawyer Alina Habba as she speaks to the media ... [+]
A jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll on Friday, after he defamed her in 2019 by denying her allegations that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and claimed Carroll isn’t “my type.”
Habba filed a letter in court Monday on Trump’s behalf, which pointed to a New York Post article reporting Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan worked at the same firm as U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation), who oversaw the case, with a source claiming the now-judge was “like [Roberta Kaplan’s]
mentor” when they worked together decades ago in the 1990s.Habba said she would use the connection as part of her appeal of the jury’s verdict, writing, “We believe, and will argue on appeal, that the Court was overtly hostile towards defense counsel and President Trump, and displayed preferential treatment towards Plaintiff’s counsel.”
Legal experts, however, suggest that tactic is unlikely to work: CNN legal analyst and former prosecutor Elie Honig called Habba’s argument “bogus” and noted on the network Monday that judges having connections to lawyers is commonplace, saying, “Every judge in that courthouse knows, socializes with, has worked with, sometimes maybe mentored, dozens, hundreds of attorneys in this city … That is not enough for a conflict of interest.”
Attorney Andrew Fleischman tweeted, “No competent lawyer in the world thinks this motion has a shot,” while former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance noted Habba has previously said Supreme Court justices who Trump appointed should be loyal to him, “But sure, go ahead and complain that a judge and a lawyer were briefly at the same firm and pretend that's a conflict.”
A representative for Roberta Kaplan denied to the New York Post and CNN that any conflict exists between the attorney and judge.
Legal experts also chided Habba for citing court ethics rules in her letter, which state judges should recuse themselves if they worked with a lawyer when they were working on the case now at issue. That isn’t the case here—since Carroll brought her case decades after Kaplan and Kaplan were at the same firm—and Honig noted on CNN that Habba’s citation of it is “self-defeating.” Judge Kaplan would only have a conflict of interest under those rules “if E. Jean Carroll was suing Donald Trump in 1992, and then the lawsuit languished for 32 years, and one of the original lawyers who filed that suit was still with the firm,” Fleischman tweeted, describing that part of the ethics law as “wreck[ing]” Habba’s argument.
It’s unclear when Trump will formally appeal the verdict against him in the Carroll case, and the appeals process is likely to be lengthy. Trump appealing the verdict likely won’t keep him from having to turn over the $83.3 million he’s been ordered to pay, however. The ex-president was previously ordered to pay $5 million as part of a separate case Carroll brought against him, which found him liable for defamation and sexual assault, and though he’s appealing that ruling, he’s had to put the damages award into a court-controlled account in the meantime.
Carroll accused Trump in 2019 of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s, and sued him in November 2019 after he attacked her and denied her account, claiming Trump’s reaction to her allegations caused her “emotional pain and suffering at the hands of the man who raped her, as well as injury to her reputation, honor and dignity.” (The jury in the first trial, which was based on separate but similar statements Trump made about Carroll, found Trump not guilty of rape, though it did find him guilty of assault.) The case went to trial in January, where Carroll testified Trump “shattered [her] reputation” with his attacks on her, while Trump took the stand for mere minutes and said he “wanted to defend myself, my family and frankly the presidency.” The jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages only a few hours after it began its deliberations. Habba’s motion taking aim at Judge Kaplan comes after the judge repeatedly chided the attorney during the trial—instructing her on basic courtroom procedures and snapping at her as she protested his statements—and Trump has attacked the judge as being biased against him. Judge Kaplan “suffers from a major case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump wrote on Truth Social during the trial, calling the judge “abusive, rude, and obviously not impartial.”
Trump Must Pay E. Jean Carroll $83 Million For Defamation, Jury Rules (Forbes)
Trump Lashes Out At Judge On Social Media—Again—While Attending Trial (Forbes)