Trump posts $91.6M bond in Carroll defamation case
NEW YORK — Donald Trump on Friday posted a $91.6 million bond in a defamation case he recently lost to the writer E. Jean Carroll, staving off a potential legal and financial disaster just days before a deadline to secure the deal.
The bond, provided by an outside insurance company, will prevent Ms. Carroll from collecting the judgment while Mr. Trump appeals.
A federal jury awarded Ms. Carroll $83.3 million in January, and Mr. Trump recently asked that the judgment be paused.
The judge presiding over the case, Lewis Kaplan, denied Mr. Trump’s request for a preliminary reprieve, putting pressure on Mr. Trump to either come up with the money himself or secure the bond.
With a Monday deadline looming, Mr. Trump posted the bond, which is higher than the $83.3 million judgment because the former president is also responsible for interest.
The bond is a promise from the company offering it — Federal Insurance Company, an arm of the insurance giant Chubb — to cover Mr. Trump’s judgment if he loses his appeal and fails to pay. In exchange, Mr. Trump must pay the company a premium and pledge collateral, including as much cash as possible.
In a court filing Friday morning, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, asked Judge Kaplan to approve the bond as “adequate and sufficient” to block Ms. Carroll from collecting the award before Mr. Trump’s appeal is decided.
In a statement, Ms. Habba said she was “highly confident” that an appeals court “will overturn this egregious judgment,” citing “numerous prejudicial errors” made at trial.
A Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in a statement that the bond had been filed “in the full amount of the baseless judgment in the Democratfunded Carroll Witch Hunt, which is being appealed and litigated.”
Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, declined to comment on Friday. Ms. Carroll herself called the bond a “stupendous amount,” in a social media post.
“Though the illustrious Robbie Kaplan is strong enough to yank a golden toilet out of the floor at Trump Tower and toss it through the window, this bond saves Robbie the trouble of showing up with U. S. marshals on Monday to do so,” Ms. Carroll wrote.
The terms of Mr. Trump’s bond deal have not been publicly disclosed, but bonding companies often charge a fee of anywhere between 1 and 3%, and require enough collateral to cover the bond.
Chubb, in a statement, said it did not comment on “client-specific” information, but that it provided appeal bonds in the normal course of business.
Judge Kaplan, in a brief order Friday, gave Ms. Carroll until 11 a.m. Monday to file any response to the proposed bond, and said that if she had any opposition to its form or amount, the judge would hold a hearing that afternoon on the matter.
The bond in Ms. Carroll’s case removes, at least for now, just one of the many looming threats from Mr. Trump’s legal docket, which also includes four criminal indictments, the first of which is going to trial in about two weeks.