Former president Donald Trump posted a $91.6 million bond in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case on Friday, while his appeal of the $83.3 million verdict against him plays out in court.
In a court filing, lawyers for Trump asked the judge presiding over the case to grant the bond covering the full amount and stay execution of the judgment, which would have become final on Monday if Trump hadn’t posted the bond in the next three days. The terms of the bond remain unclear. The request effectively prevents Carroll from collecting the money on the judgment while the appeal is pending.
U.S. district judge Lewis Kaplan, who holds jurisdiction in the Southern District of New York, ordered a response from Carroll’s attorneys by Monday morning, NBC News reported. If they oppose Trump’s request, the judge said he could hold a hearing on the matter later that day.
The latest development in the defamation case comes one day after Kaplan denied Trump’s previous request for more time to pay the ordered damages. The judge said the defendant had enough time to pay it off since a jury handed down its verdict in late January.
“Mr. Trump’s current situation is a result of his own dilatory actions,” Kaplan wrote in the Thursday order. “He has had since January 26 to organize his finances with the knowledge that he might need to bond this judgment, yet he waited until 25 days after the jury verdict . . . to file his prior motion for an unsecured or partially secured stay pending resolution of post-trial motions.”
Trump was ordered to pay $65 million in punitive damages and $18.3 million in compensatory damages, adding to a total of $83.3 million.
Carroll originally sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he repeatedly denied her sexual-assault allegations, and she lodged another suit in 2022 accusing him of rape and of again defaming her in a Truth Social post in October 2022 calling her allegations a “hoax.” The former president was found liable for defamation and sexual battery in May 2023, when he was ordered to pay $5 million in combined damages.
At the time, the jury concluded that Trump most likely sexually assaulted Carroll in 1996, as she has claimed, but rejected the allegation that he raped her. The jury also decided that Trump’s “hoax” post did defame Carroll.
Considering liability had already been determined, the second jury was tasked only with deciding how much Trump should pay Carroll over defamation in the 2019 suit, on top of the $5 million that was awarded last year. Carroll originally sought $10 million in damages, but her lawyers increased the amount to at least $24 million during the five-day trial’s closing arguments in January.
Trump has repeatedly maintained his innocence by claiming that he never met Carroll, let alone assaulted her.
The $83 million defamation verdict was not the only court decision recently served against Trump during his run for the 2024 presidency. Last month, Manhattan supreme court judge Arthur Engoron ordered him to pay New York over $350 million in penalties and about $100 million in prejudgment interest for multiple fraud counts related to his real-estate empire’s allegedly fraudulent financial statements.
The deadline for the $454 million judgment in the civil-fraud case is March 25.