Former president Donald J. Trump outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, before he departs on a two-day trip to Des Moines, Iowa, May 31, 2023.
Kyle Mazza | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Donald Trump has posted $5.6 million as security as the former president appeals a civil conviction that he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and defamed her decades later, a court filing revealed Friday .
If Trump loses the appeal, Carroll will collect the $5 million a jury awarded him in the case in May, or any adjusted judgment, according to a joint stipulation submitted by his attorneys and attorneys for Carroll.
But if Trump wins his appeal, he will return the security deposit, “with any interest earned on such funds” while they are held in an account under court control, that stipulation said.
If the appeals court or Supreme Court sends the case back to U.S. District Court in Manhattan for further proceedings, the funds will remain where they are until any award to Carroll “become final and unappealable,” according to confrontation.
Judge Lewis Kaplan approved the arrangement Friday afternoon.
Former Elle magazine advise columnist E. Jean Carroll watches as Joe Tacopina, former US President Donald Trump’s lawyer, makes closing arguments during the civil trial in which Carroll accuses Trump of rape of him in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, and defamation, New York, May 8, 2023.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
Carroll, in her lawsuit, claimed that Trump, the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, raped her in a dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store in the mid-1990s after a chance encounter there.
He also said he discredited her last fall with statements she made while denying his allegations.
After a trial in May, a jury found that Trump, 77, was responsible for sexually abusing Carroll — but not for raping her. Jurors also found that he defamed her.
Trump asked the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to overturn the ruling.
Separately, he asked Kaplan to order a new trial only on questions of money damages.
In a June 8 court filing, Trump attorney Joseph Tacopina argued that the $2 million jury awarded the 79-year-old Carroll for Trump sexually abusing her was “excessive” under of the case law. Tacopina said Carroll’s damages for that claim should be “in the low six-figure range” at best.
Defense counsel also argued that the $2.7 million in compensatory damages awarded to Carroll should be substantially reduced to no more than $368,000.
In a letter Friday to Kaplan, Tacopina wrote that his law firm currently holds $5.6 million of Trump’s money in a trust account and will deposit those funds into a court-controlled account if the judge approves as stipulated.
Trump faces the possibility of being ordered to pay more money to Carroll next year.
Kaplan has scheduled a trial to begin Jan. 15 for another lawsuit filed by Carroll against Trump. In that case, Carroll alleges that Trump defamed her over comments he made about her while he was president after she first went public with her rape claims.
Carroll is seeking damages of at least $10 million in that case. Kaplan allowed him, this month, to amend his current lawsuit to include Trump’s comments about him in May on CNN, a day after he lost the first trial.
Trump was criminally indicted earlier this month by a federal grand jury in Miami on charges related to his retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida residence after he left the White House in January 2021. .He pleaded not guilty in that case.
He also pleaded not guilty in a New York state case to nearly three dozen criminal counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments made before the 2016 presidential election to two women. who said they had sex with him.
Trump is separately under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors for efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, and by an Atlanta prosecutor for his attempt to impeach Georgia officials in the victory of President Joe Biden in that state that year.
