Why Trump’s attempt to stall $83M Carroll payment didn’t work

12 March 2024

During an appearance on CNBC, attorney Roberta Kaplan — who has represented writer E. Jean Carroll in her two defamation lawsuits against former President Donald Trump — indicated that a third defamation case is possible if Trump continues to verbally attack the former Elle Magazine columnist.

Kaplan told CNBC, "As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client, E. Jean Carroll."

Meanwhile, Trump is still reeling from the damages that juries have ordered him to pay in Carroll's two defamation lawsuits: $5 million in the first, $83.3 million in the second.

Trump and his lawyers have been trying to delay the second payment. But according to the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, an attempted delay proved unsuccessful.

"When Donald Trump posted the $91.6 million bond on Friday allowing him to appeal the E. Jean Carroll decision without paying her immediately," Pagliery explains in an article published on March 12, "it set off an interesting scramble to unpack why Federal Insurance Company — a subsidiary of Chubb Insurance Company — would lend to a notoriously unreliable borrower. But there was also some fine print in the bond that would have, curiously, given Trump an additional 30 days to come up with the money — as well as another 30 days for FIC to come up with the money if Trump failed to pay."

The Daily Beast reporter continues, "That meant Trump had found a way to unilaterally stall paying up, pending the consent of the court…. for three days, it seemed as if Trump had gotten away with a minor tweak in court paperwork that would have created a two-month delay in having to pay a cent to the journalist he defamed — even if he lost the rape defamation case on appeal."

But Pagliery reports that Kaplan's attorney "spotted the odd jumble of legalese and pressured Trump's legal team to give up the ploy for extra time."

"According to Neil Pedersen, who runs an eponymous appellate bond agency in Manhattan, Trump's extension on paying up was 'not standard,'" Pagliery notes. "The episode is merely the latest example of the many twists and turns that continue to unfold as Carroll fights to punish the man who keeps denying that he sexually attacked her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store — even though one federal jury concluded he did it and a second federal jury fined him to stop his lies about the assault."

Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

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