On Thursday, a federal judge denied Donald Trump’s request for three more days to pay damages in writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against former Pres.
The scheduled payment deadline is Monday. Trump had to pay $83.3 million, and the full amount with interest will be $91.6 million.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial in New York, said Trump had plenty of time to arrange the payment in the weeks after a jury in January indicted Carroll for defamation after denying he sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s. In the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.
“Mr. Trump’s current situation is the result of his own expansionist actions,” Kaplan wrote in the order. “He must manage his finances knowing that he may need to close this trial starting January 26.”
A Trump campaign spokesman condemned the order in a statement Thursday.
“This is a continuation of a completely illegal Witch Hunt. President Trump filed a timely motion to stay the ridiculous sentence, and many courts, including the Second Circuit, recognize the importance of temporary administrative stays pending such motions,” said Stephen Cheung. “We look forward to continuing the case and seeing the Truth vindicated.”
On Wednesday, Trump’s attorney Alina Habba asked Kaplan to stay the sentence for up to three business days after the court granted a longer stay in order to get ahead of Monday’s deadline to finalize the ruling.
Trump last month asked for a longer stay on the sentence, pending a resolution of his post-trial motions. Kaplan has not yet ruled on this request.
Trump’s lawyers appealed to a new court Tuesday in the lawsuit and asked Kaplan to significantly reduce the sentence. They argued that the jury’s compensatory and punitive awards were disproportionate and argued that the $11 million award for reputational damage was “disproportionately high” compared to awards in similar cases.