|
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan,
Trump's lawyer Alina Habba said she was satisfied that the judge
and Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who is not related, did not
have a "mentor-mentee relationship" when they worked at the same
law firm three decades ago.
Habba had on Monday suggested that such a relationship might
have tainted the $83.3 million jury award that Carroll, a former
Elle magazine advice columnist, won against Trump last Friday.
She cited a Jan. 27 New York Post article that quoted an unnamed
former partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison as
saying Judge Kaplan had been "like a mentor" to Roberta Kaplan
when both worked for about two years at the firm.
In a letter on Tuesday, Roberta Kaplan called it "utterly
baseless" to suggest there had been such a relationship, and
said she might seek sanctions if Habba kept making "false
accusations of impropriety."
Habba indicated that Kaplan's letter appeared to settle the
matter.
"The point of my January 29 letter was to verify whether the
information contained in the New York Post article is accurate,"
she wrote. "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."
A spokesperson for Roberta Kaplan declined to comment.
Trump plans to appeal the $83.3 million verdict, which stemmed
from his June 2019 denials that he raped Carroll in a Bergdorf
Goodman department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
He is appealing a $5 million award to Carroll by a different
jury last May, which found Trump liable for a similar October
2022 defamation and for sexual abuse.
The first jury's findings were binding for the second trial,
leaving the jury there to focus only on damages.
Trump's legal team has argued that Carroll suffered no harm, and
enjoyed the fame and attention her case drew.
In Tuesday's letter, Habba stood by her comments that Judge
Kaplan's "overtly hostile" treatment of Trump's side and
"preferential" treatment of Carroll's side could also support an
appeal.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel in New York;
Editing by Bill Berkrot and Aurora Ellis)
[© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
