By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump will deposit $5.55 million with a federal court as security while the former U.S. president appeals a jury verdict that he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll.
Trump is appealing last month’s $5 million verdict by a Manhattan federal jury, which said he defamed the former Elle magazine columnist last October by calling her claim that he raped her in the mid-1990s a hoax and a lie.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the trial, agreed to the deposit proposed by Trump’s lawyer Joseph Tacopina, whose law firm has been holding the $5.55 million.
Courts often require 111% of a judgment to be deposited during appeals.
Carroll would collect her $5 million if Trump’s appeals, including potentially to the Supreme Court, were unsuccessful. The money set aside plus interest would be returned to Trump if he prevailed.
Tacopina and other lawyers from his firm did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment. Carroll’s lawyers agreed to the $5.55 million deposit.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, on June 8 asked for a new trial, saying the damages were excessive in part because the jury found that Carroll was sexually abused, but not raped as she had claimed.
Lawyers for Carroll on Thursday called Trump’s request for a do-over “magical thinking.”
Carroll is also suing Trump for $10 million stemming from his June 2019 denial of her rape claim.
She is also seeking punitive damages, after he repeated his denials in a CNN town hall one day after the jury verdict.
The case is Carroll v Trump, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-10016.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
