NEW YORK (AP) 鈥 Donald Trump鈥檚 lawyers asked a New York judge Friday to suspend an $83.3 million defamation verdict against the former president, saying there was a 鈥渟trong probability鈥 that it would be reduced on appeal, if not eliminated.
The lawyers made the request in Manhattan federal court, where a civil jury in late January awarded the sum to advice columnist after a five-day trial that focused only on damages. A judge had ordered the jury to accept the findings of another jury that last year concluded Trump sexually abused Carroll in 1996 and defamed her in 2022.
The second jury focused only on statements Trump made in 2019 while he was president in a case long delayed by appeals.
In the filing Friday, Trump's lawyers wrote that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan should suspend the execution of a judgment he issued on Feb. 8 until a month after he resolves Trump's post-trial motions, which will be filed by March 7. Otherwise, they said, he should grant a partially secured stay that would for a fraction of the award.
The lawyers said the $65 million punitive award, atop $18.3 in compensatory damages, was 鈥減lainly excessive鈥 because it violates the Constitution and federal common law.
鈥淭here is a strong probability that the disposition of post-trial motions will substantially reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of the judgment,鈥 they said.
Trump did not attend a trial last May when a Manhattan jury awarded Carroll $5 million after concluding that the real estate magnate sexually attacked Carroll in spring 1996 in the dressing room of a luxury Bergdorf Goodman store across the street from Trump Plaza in midtown Manhattan.
Since Carroll, 80, first made her claims public in a memoir in 2019, Trump, 77, has repeatedly derided them as lies made to sell her book and damage him politically. He has called her a 鈥渨hack job鈥 and said that she wasn't 鈥渉is type,鈥 a reference that Carroll testified was meant to suggest she was too ugly to rape.
Carroll also testified that she has faced death threats from Trump supporters and has had her reputation shattered after remarks Trump continued to make even as the trial was going on.
At the second trial, Trump attended regularly and briefly testified, though he did most of his communication with the jury through frequent shakes of his head and disparaging enough that a prosecutor complained that jurors surely heard them and the judge threatened to banish him from the courtroom.
Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll and no relation to the judge, declined comment Friday.
Alina Habba, one of Trump's attorneys, said in a statement that January's jury award was 鈥渆gregiously excessive.鈥
鈥淭he Court must exercise its authority to prevent Ms. Carroll's (sic) from enforcing this absurd judgment, which will not withstand appeal,鈥 Habba said.
Since the January verdict, a state court judge in New York in a separate case has ordered Trump and his companies to pay $355 million in penalties for a yearslong scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated his wealth. With interest, .
