Trump's legal team to appeal $83.3M judgment in E. Jean Carroll case
Author E. Jean Carroll made out like a bandit last week after a jury awarded her an $83.3 million judgment in her second defamation trial against former President Donald Trump.
According to Breitbart, Trump's lawyers are already preparing an appeal of the staggeringly unfair judgment based on an "insane" conflict of interest between the judge and Carroll's lawyer.
Trump's attorney, Alina Habba, said that during the trial, which Trump attended regularly, she was unaware that "Judge Lewis Kaplan had previously mentored E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, in the 1990s."
It was also noted that although the judge and Carroll's attorney share a last name, they're unrelated.
Habba went on record as saying, "It was never disclosed. It’s insane and so incestuous."
Here we go! Habba and Madaio file letter with Judge Kaplan informing him they will be using this mentor relationship in their appeal. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/QLzT5dddLS
— JKash 🍊MAGA Queen (@JKash000) January 29, 2024
Breitbart noted:
According to the Daily Mail, the conflict-of-interest allegations erupted from an “anonymous former Weiss partner, who reportedly claimed Roberta Kaplan — a junior associate — made an extra effort to stand out to the managing partners.”
The Daily Mail report added, "Before becoming a founding partner at law firm Kaplan, Keckler & Fink in 2016, Roberta Kaplan worked alongside the judge at Paul, Weiss Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison in Manhattan."
The report added, "She began at the firm in 1992, according to her LinkedIn, where Judge Kaplan was a partner until he was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994."
A representative for Carroll's lawyer released a statement in the wake of the revelation of the previous relationship, downplaying that the two were ever close.
"They overlapped for less than two years in the early 1990s at a large law firm when he was a senior partner and she was a junior associate and she never worked for him," the lawyers representative said.
In late-breaking news, the former president announced that Habba will not be on the appeals team. Independent journalist Simon Ateba reported the news in an X post.
"BREAKING: Alina Habba (@AlinaHabba) will not represent Donald Trump in his E. Jean Carroll appeal. The former president wrote, 'I am in the process, along with my team, of interviewing various law firms to represent me in an Appeal of one of the most ridiculous and unfair Witch Hunts our Country has ever seen - The defamation Sham presided over by a Clinton appointed, highly partisan, Trump Hating Judge, Lewis Kaplan, who was, together with certain other Radical Left Democrat Judges, one of the most partisan and out of control activists that I have ever appeared before.'" he wrote.
Similar reports and speculation indicated that Trump will ultimately hire a high-powered firm that specializes in appeals.