Trump Tries Last-Gasp Appeal After Judge He Called a ‘Bully’ Curtly Orders Payment of $5 Million to E. Jean Carroll

The denial of President Trump’s latest bid to delay paying the advice columnist E. Jean Carrol the $5 million owed her for sexual abuse and defamation brings the journalist closer to a payday — although Mr. Trump is trying one final Hail Mary motion to the Supreme Court to avoid paying her.Judge Lewis Kaplan on Monday rejected — with no explanation — the effort by the 47th president’s lawyers to secure a delay in the payment until July 14. Ms. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, objected to the request by accusing Mr. Trump of seeking “to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying.”Mr. Trump contends that Ms. Carroll, 82, “faces no risk of material harm as a result of granting this request.” The request for a delay cited the president’s retention of a new lead counsel, Josh Halpern, who requires some runway to “become completely familiar with the facts and procedural circumstances” of the case. A Manhattan jury brought in the verdict in Ms. Carroll’s favor in 2023.Ms. Kaplan responded to that request for more time by writing to Judge Kaplan that Mr. Trump “has had ample time to retain new counsel to substitute for Mr. Smith, and if he believed it was necessary to have new counsel come in given Mr. Smith’s departure, he should have been acting diligently to do that since at least February.”The president’s obligation to pay the $5 million was paused while he appealed the verdict first to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court. Last week the justices denied his petition for review in the form of a writ of certiorari. That nearly exhausted Mr. Trump’s appellate path — save for the motion for reconsideration the president filed on Monday. A pause was also applied to a separate verdict, for $83 million, imposed on Mr. Trump in 2024 after a separate jury found that he further defamed Ms. Carroll after the first trial. With interest, the total that Mr. Trump owes Ms. Carroll is now more than $100 million, all of it held in escrow by the Southern District of New York, where Judge Kaplan sits.Mr. Trump is not yet obligated to pay that $83 million because he has not exhausted his appeal at the Supreme Court, though his filings to the Second Circuit indicate that such an appeal is forthcoming before a deadline of July 28. The president is likely to argue on appeal that he is protected from paying by the Supreme Court’s grant of presidential immunity in Trump v. United States. He is also poised to argue that he ought to be able to substitute the Department of Justice for himself in the proceedings.Such a swap would sound the death knell for Ms. Carroll’s claims, because longstanding precedent maintains that America cannot be held liable for defamation. Mr. Trump has frequently locked horns with Judge Kaplan, who presided over both trials. The president has called the judge a bully and in 2023 wrote, “What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possibly be?”Mr. Trump’s previous attorney on the case, Justin Smith, was last month confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Eighth Circuit Appeals Court. Before departing for the federal bench, though, he wrote to the Supreme Court that the justices “may wish to consider the petitions together” — meaning Mr. Trump’s request that both cases be reversed. Any kind of joint consideration would be a boon for the president, because the overhang of presidential immunity could conceivably shield him from liability in both cases.The motion for reconsideration filed on Monday follows the justices’ earlier rejection of his petition for review. He wants the Nine to at least retain the possibility of revisiting the $5 million verdict until it can also consider the $83 million one.

Trump Tries Last-Gasp Appeal After Judge He Called a ‘Bully’ Curtly Orders Payment of $5 Million to E. Jean Carroll

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