In a surprising turn of events, a legal representative for Donald Trump has retracted her earlier insinuation that the judge overseeing E. Jean Carroll’s recent successful defamation trials against the former president may have been compromised by a conflict of interest.
In a formal letter addressed to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba expressed her satisfaction after a reassessment, asserting that there was no evidence of a “mentor-mentee relationship” between Judge Kaplan and Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, during their shared tenure at the law firm three decades ago.
This about-face comes on the heels of a statement made by Habba on Monday, suggesting a potential influence on the $83.3 million jury award granted to Carroll last Friday. The lawyer had cited an anonymous former partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, whose remarks in a January 27 New York Post article hinted at a mentor-like dynamic between the judge and Roberta Kaplan.
Roberta Kaplan swiftly dismissed the allegation in a strongly-worded letter on Tuesday, labeling it as “utterly baseless.” She warned of seeking sanctions if such “false accusations of impropriety” persisted.
Habba, acknowledging Kaplan’s response, declared in her letter, “Since Ms. Kaplan has now denied that there was ever a mentor-mentee relationship between herself and Your Honor, this issue has seemingly been resolved.”
Despite this resolution, Trump’s legal team remains steadfast in its plan to appeal the $83.3 million verdict, which originated from Trump’s 2019 denials of raping Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. A separate $5 million award to Carroll in May 2023, related to a 2022 defamation case, is also under appeal by the former president.
Habba, in her Tuesday letter, reiterated her concerns about what she described as Judge Kaplan’s “overtly hostile” treatment of Trump’s side and the perceived “preferential” treatment of Carroll’s side, hinting at potential grounds for an appeal.
As the legal drama unfolds, the intricacies of the courtroom battles continue to capture attention, adding further complexity to the ongoing legal disputes involving Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll.
