Case type: Civil Where: New York Supreme Court Attorney: Roberta Kaplan Status: Trump was found liable for battery and defamation in May 2023 and was found liable in a second defamation trial in January 2024.
In a 2019 New York cover story, writer E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. After Trump accused her of lying, Carroll, represented by Roberta Kaplan, sued him fordefamation. Then she sued for damages over the alleged assault, taking advantage of a recent New York law that extends the statute of limitations for adult survivors of sexual abuse. The trial began in April 2023, and on May 9, a jury ruled that Trump was liable for sexual assault and defamation, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages.
A second defamation trial began in federal court in New York on January 15, 2024, and lasted a week, with Carroll testifying that Trump destroyed her reputation after she accused him of assault. A jury found Trump liable for defamation after three hours of deliberation, ordering him to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages. Trump and his legal team have vowed to appeal both verdicts.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan said former President Donald Trump threw papers across a table and stormed off during a deposition at Mar-a-Lago after learning that his legal team had agreed to provide her lunch.
Kaplan, who has represented clients in high-profile cases against Trump, including E. Jean Carroll, said on an episode of the “George Conway Explains it All (to Sarah Longwell)” podcast recorded Thursday that she rejected the former president’s request that they work through a lunch break because he believed the deposition was “a waste of my time.”
“And then you could kind of see the wheel spinning in his brain. You could really almost see it,” Kaplan told Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and conservative attorney George Conway, a longtime Trump critic. “And he said, ‘Well, you’re here in Mar-a-Lago. What do you think you’re going to do for lunch? Where are you going to get lunch?’”
Kaplan said she told him that his attorneys had “graciously offered to provide” her team with lunch — a common civil practice between opposing legal teams.
“At which point there was a huge pile of documents, exhibits, sitting in front of him, and he took the pile and he just threw it across the table. And stormed out of the room,” Kaplan shared, adding that Trump specifically yelled at his lawyer Alina Habba for providing them lunch.
“He really yelled at Alina for that. He was so mad at Alina,” she said.
Kaplan continued: “He came back in and he said, ‘Well, how’d you like the lunch?’ And I said, ‘Well, sir, I had a banana. You know, I can never really eat when I’m taking testimony.’ And he said, ‘Well, I told you,’ — it was kind of charming. He said, ‘I told you, I told them to make you really bad sandwiches, but they can’t help themselves here. We have the best sandwiches.’”
Kaplan was deposing Trump at Mar-Lago in a lawsuit alleging the former president was involved with a fraudulent marketing company. A federal judge dismissed the suit last month.
In a separate anecdote, Kaplan detailed the end of the deposition when she was set to leave, saying that Trump told her: “See you next Tuesday” – a phrase that is often used as a derogatory euphemism directed at women.
“We come in the room and I say, ‘I’m done asking questions’ and immediately I hear from the other side, ‘Off the record. Off the record. Off the record.’ So they must have planned it. And he looks at me from across the table and he says, ‘See you next Tuesday,’” she recounted.
Kaplan said that she was initially confused, as their next meeting was set for a Wednesday. “You could tell it was like, it was like a kind of a joke again, like teenage boys would come up with. But again, I wasn’t in on the joke,” she said.
“I wasn’t in on the joke, so I had no idea. Then we get into the car and my colleagues are like, ‘Robbie, do you know what that means?’ And I’m like, ‘No, what are you talking about?’ They tell me and I’m like, oh my God, thank God I didn’t know because had I known, I for sure would have gotten angry. There’s no question I would have gotten angry,” Kaplan said.
CNN has reached out to representatives for Trump and Habba.
Kaplan’s comments come a week after her victory in Carroll’s defamation trial against Trump. A jury awarded Carroll — a former magazine columnist who has alleged Trump raped her in a department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim — $83.3 million. Trump is expected to appeal the verdict.
E. Jean Carroll and attorney Roberta Kaplan (R) is seen leaving Manhattan Federal Court on January 26, 2024 in New York City. – GWR/Star Max/Getty Images
Kaplan also described last week’s verdict as a career-defining moment. When asked which feels better — winning the defamation case against Trump or her successful challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013 that led to the eventual Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for same-sex marriage — Kaplan pointed to her recent victory.
“I spent my whole life devoted to the principle that we have a rule of law and we have a judicial system that works,” Kaplan said. “And that’s what makes us a constitutional democracy, that’s — at least until recently — was to be admired worldwide. And it was starting, I mean, it is in times looking like that may not be true.”
But, she added: “This case validated that at least as of now, we still have all that.”
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Donald Trump has to cut a fat check, and his appeal of the E. Jean Carroll verdict won’t delay that.
Within 30 days of the judge’s written judgment, Trump will have to turn over either cash or a bond.
While he appeals the verdict, Carroll can’t touch that money — but neither can Trump.
Donald Trump’s appeal of his $83.3 million verdict in the E. Jean Carroll trial may keep the money out of her pocket for a year or more, but the former president will still have to cough up at least $90 million — and soon.
The dominos for Trump’s big, looming outlay — covering damages plus court-mandated interest — are already falling or poised to fall.
The first was the January 26 verdict itself.
A federal jury, sitting in Manhattan, found Trump defamed Carroll in 2019 by calling her a liar after she told the world he’d sexually assaulted her. The bulk of the jury award, $65 million, was punitive damages after Trump kept calling Carroll a liar, even during the trial.
The next domino? Clearing up any lingering, post-verdict legal squabbles. That includes Trump’s claim this week that the verdict should be tossed because Carroll’s lead lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, was employed at the same national law firm as the judge — for two years and 30 long years ago.
E. Jean Carroll, center, leaves Manhattan Federal Court with attorney Roberta Kaplan.Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Once all post-verdict squabbles are settled, the final legal domino will fall, triggering a payment clock to start ticking.
Only when that judgment is filed is the trial officially over, allowing Trump’s side to appeal, as his lawyers have promised to do.
Trump will have 30 days, post-judgment, to pay up
Once there’s a judgment, Trump will have 30 days to pay his damages, though an appellate court will almost certainly allow Trump to forgo paying Carroll directly until the appeal is decided.
Trump would have to set the money aside, though, and he can choose to do so in the form of either cash or bond.
Last time around, for the $5 million verdict, Trump went with cash.
Trump’s $5.5 million is still there, pending the outcome of his appeal of that first verdict, a source familiar with the case told Business Insider, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to do so publicly. An appellate court will eventually decide if Carroll gets all, some, or none of that $5.5 million.
This time around, Trump can again ask the judge to let him set Carroll’s second, much higher damages award aside in a court-managed account. There it would sit pending appeal, just like the $5.5 million from the first verdict.
If the judge says no — and $90 million is a lot for a court to babysit — Trump will have to secure Carroll’s money through what’s called an appeal bond.
A bond would be a lot more expensive
Taking into account interest and other fees, including the potential need to secure an irrevocable letter of credit from a bank, Trump taking the appeal-bond route could bring his total outlay to $100 million and beyond.
A surety company could make Trump provide an extra 10 percent of collateral, and would require he pay a bond premium of anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million. The premium is money Trump would never see again, according to a surety executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Such a large bond could likely only be handled by one of the surety giants — such as Travelers Insurance, Liberty Mutual, Chubb, or JP Morgan Chase, said the expert, whose employer does not allow press statements.
Former President Donald TrumpScott Eisen/Getty Images
That pending fraud verdict could complicate things
Here’s an added wrinkle.
Within days, a Manhattan judge will issue a verdict in the New York attorney general’s nearly five-year effort to hold Trump accountable for business fraud at the Trump Organization.
A costly AG verdict and a ban on borrowing would limit Trump’s options when it comes to setting aside Carroll’s damages. He may have to rely on the cash he has on hand to cover both massive verdicts — or even start selling assets.
Lawyers for Carroll and Habba did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story.
NEW YORK — A writer who accused former President Donald Trump of rape filed an upgraded lawsuit against him Thursday in New York, minutes after a new state law took effect allowing victims of sexual violence to sue over attacks that occurred decades ago.
E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer filed the legal papers electronically as the Adult Survivor’s Act temporarily lifted the state’s usual deadlines for suing over sexual assault. She sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for pain and suffering, psychological harms, dignity loss and reputation damage.
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, first made the claim in a 2019 book, saying Trump raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan luxury department store in 1995 or 1996.
Trump responded to the book’s allegations by saying it could never have happened because Carroll was “not my type.”
His remarks led Carroll to file a defamation lawsuit against him, but that lawsuit has been tied up in appeals courts as judges decide whether he is protected from legal claims for comments made while he was president.
Previously, Carroll had been barred by state law from suing over the alleged rape because too many years had passed since the incident.
New York’s new law, however, gives sex crime victims who missed deadlines associated with statute of limitations a second chance to file a lawsuit. A window for such suits will open for one year, after which the usual time limits will be reinstated.
At least hundreds of lawsuits are expected, including many filed by women who say they were assaulted by co-workers, prison guards, medical providers or others.
In her new claims, Carroll maintains that Trump committed battery “when he forcibly raped and groped her” and that he defamed her when he denied raping her last month.
Trump said in his statement that Carroll “completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years.”
Carroll’s new ability to sue Trump for rape could help her sidestep a potentially fatal legal flaw in her original defamation case.
If the courts ultimately hold that Trump’s original disparaging comments about Carroll’s rape allegation were part of his job duties, as president, she would be barred from suing him over those remarks, as federal employees are protected from defamation claims. No such protection would cover things he did prior to becoming president.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who presides over the defamation lawsuit Carroll filed three years ago, may decide to include the new claims in a trial likely to occur in the spring.
Trump’s current lawyers said this week that they do not yet know whether they will represent him against the new allegations.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, said at a court hearing this week that the new claims should not require much additional gathering of evidence. She already put a copy of the new claims in the original case file last week. Trump and Carroll also have already been deposed.
In a statement regarding the new lawsuit, Kaplan said her client “intends to hold Donald Trump accountable not only for defaming her, but also for sexually assaulting her, which he did years ago in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman.”
“Thanksgiving Day was the very first day Ms. Carroll could file under New York law so our complaint was filed with the court shortly after midnight,” she added.
Attorney Michael Madaio, a lawyer for Trump, said at the hearing that the new allegations are significantly different than the original defamation lawsuit and would require “an entirely new set” of evidence gathering.
A lawyer for Trump did not respond to a message seeking comment on Wednesday. Another message seeking comment was sent to the lawyer after the lawsuit was filed less than 10 minutes into the new day.
