Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference after attending the second civil trial of E. Jean Carroll in New York City on January 17, 2024.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Former President Donald Trump on Friday appealed a civil libel ruling in favor of writer E. Jean Carroll, posting a $91.6 million bond to prevent him from having to pay her damages while he faces this pursues appeal.
The appeal came just three days before Trump faced a deadline to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll for her defamation in 2019, the first time as president he rejected her allegation that he had committed it in the mid-1990s Raped in a Manhattan department store for years.
The $91.6 million bail he posted is intended to secure that damages in the event his appeal against the January jury verdict fails. Trump will get the bond money back if he wins his appeal.
Carroll called the bond size “astonishing” in a Substack post later Friday and suggested that she would have quickly begun seizing Trump’s assets if he had not received the judgment on time.
She added that while her lawyer Roberta Kaplan is “strong enough to rip a gold toilet out of the floor of Trump Tower and throw it through the window,” that bond saved Robbie the trouble of going to the U.S. Marshals on Monday appear to do this.”
Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is not related to Carroll’s lawyer, on Thursday rejected a request from Trump to delay the writer’s pay.
E. Jean Carroll and her attorneys Shawn Crowley and Roberta Kaplan react in federal court in Manhattan following the verdict in the second civil trial after she accused former U.S. President Donald Trump of raping her decades ago on January 26, 2024 in New York City to have .
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
According to a copy of the document signed by Trump, the bond was issued by Federal Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Chubb Insurance Company based in Chesapeake, Virginia. It represents 110% of the total damages awarded to Carroll in this case, reflecting the fact that New York law increases damages at a rate of 9% annually.
A court filing about the bond did not indicate how much Trump either paid or put up as collateral to obtain the bond.
Chubb Chairman and CEO Evan Greenberg was appointed by Trump in 2018 to the U.S. Trade Representative’s Trade Policy and Negotiations Advisory Committee. Greenberg is no longer on this board.
Chubb is mentioned in another of Trump’s major legal cases: the New York civil white collar fraud case, in which Trump was ordered to pay more than $450 million for lying on financial forms about his net worth and property value.
The New York attorney general’s lawsuit that led to these claims alleged that Trump misrepresented the size of his triplex apartment in Trump Tower to a Chubb appraiser in 2010 as part of the homeowners insurance underwriting process Unity had turned.
Trump, who personally led a tour of the apartment, kept access to the master bedroom and a dressing room blocked because “Mrs. Trump was sleeping,” the expert wrote, according to the lawsuit.
The appraiser also found that there was little time to survey the property because the appointment was “conducted at a pace dictated by Mr. Trump,” who only scheduled about 15 minutes for the survey, the lawsuit says.
Trump told the appraiser that he believed the triplex was about 25,000 to 30,000 square feet, depending on the lawsuit. But the actual size was 10,996 square feet.
Kaplan gave Carroll’s lawyers until Monday morning to file any objections to Trump’s proposed bail and court order. If there is disagreement over Trump’s demands, the parties will argue before Kaplan on Monday afternoon.
A spokesman for Carroll’s lawyers asked CNBC if they would object to the bond proposal, saying it would be a “wait and see” thing.
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Trump is also appealing another federal civil judgment in Manhattan last year that ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million in damages for sexually abusing her in the mid-1990s and then using her in comments, which he had submitted in 2022, had defamed.
As part of that other appeal, he transferred $5.6 million in cash to the court to secure the damages he owed.
Trump is also appealing the $454 million verdict in his civil white collar fraud case in New York state court.
An appeals court judge last week rejected Trump’s request to post just $100 million in bail to secure those damages to overturn the fraud verdict.
A panel of appeals judges will hear Trump’s bail request in the fraud case.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, faces 91 felony counts in four separate cases. He pleaded not guilty in all of these cases.
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2024-03-08 21:14:57
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