Donald Trump’s legal woes continued to mount as a lawyer in an upcoming defamation case asked a judge to ensure the former president does not disrupt imminent legal proceedings – and, in a separate issue, he was ordered to pay nearly $400,000 in legal fees to the New York Times.
In the first of those two cases, a lawyer for E Jean Carroll – a columnist who last year won a $5m jury award against Trump for sexual abuse – urged a judge to take strong measures to ensure Trump does not “sow chaos” when a new jury considers next week if he owes even more in damages.
Trump said on Thursday that he would next week attend the Manhattan federal court trial, where a jury will consider a request by lawyers for Carroll that she be awarded $10m in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages for statements Trump has made.
“If Mr Trump appears at this trial, whether as a witness or otherwise, his recent statements and behavior strongly suggest that he will seek to sow chaos. Indeed, he may well perceive a benefit in seeking to poison these proceedings,” attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in a letter to Judge Lewis A Kaplan.
“There are any number of reasons why Mr Trump might perceive a personal or political benefit from intentionally turning this trial into a circus,” said Roberta Kaplan, who has no relation to the judge.
She said she worried about “the possibility that he will seek to testify, and the associated risk that he will violate court orders if he does so”.
She recommended that Lewis Kaplan warn Trump of the possible consequences of violating court orders severely limiting what the former president and his lawyers can say at the trial.
A lawyer for Trump did not immediately return a message seeking comment from the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, ABC News reported that the New York supreme court justice Robert Reed had ordered Trump to pay the New York Times $392,638 in legal fees after a failed lawsuit against the newspaper over its reporting on his tax records.
In 2021, Trump sued his niece Mary Trump, the New York Times and three of its reporters. He alleged the reporters were “motivated by a personal vendetta”.
But the case was dismissed, paving the way for the Times to get back its financial costs of fighting the matter in court.
Citing court papers, ABC reported Reed as stating: “Considering the complexity of the issues presented in this action, the number of causes of action, the experience, ability and reputation of defendants’ attorneys, the considerable amount in dispute, and the attorneys’ success in dismissing the complaint against their defendants … the court finds that $392,638.69 is a reasonable value for the legal services rendered.”
The decision is likely to irk Trump more than just financially. He frequently rails against the media and the New York Times in particular.
Meanwhile, in the Carroll case, the columnist’s lawyer urged Judge Kaplan in her letter to require Trump to say under oath in open court but without jurors present that he understands he sexually assaulted Carroll and that he spoke falsely with actual malice and lied when he accused her of fabricating her account and impugning her motives.
A jury last May awarded Carroll $5m in damages after concluding that, although there was not sufficient evidence to find Trump raped Carroll, there was proof that she was sexually abused at the Bergdorf Goodman store, and Trump defamed her with statements he made in October 2022.
Because the defamation award was limited to Trump’s fall 2022 statements, a jury next week will begin considering whether Carroll is entitled to additional damages for statements Trump made about her claims while he was president in 2019 and the day after the verdict last spring.
Carroll, 80, testified at last year’s trial that she had suffered emotionally and in her romantic life since Trump attacked her and that his severe denunciation of claims she first made in a 2019 memoir after she was inspired by the #MeToo movement had severely damaged her career and led to threats against her.
Trump has repeatedly said that he never assaulted Carroll and didn’t know her and that he suspected she was driven to make claims against him to promote her book and for political reasons.
In her letter to the judge on Friday, Kaplan cited Trump’s behavior at a state court proceeding on Thursday in Manhattan where he ignored a judge’s insistence that he keep remarks focused on trial-related matters. Trump said, “I am an innocent man,” adding that he was being “persecuted by someone running for office”.
She wrote that Trump’s behavior in state court “provides a potential preview of exactly what we might expect to see at next week’s trial”.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
