Former President Donald Trump's legal team is set to challenge a ridiculous $83.3 million jury verdict in the defamation case brought by lunatic E. Jean Carroll.
The basis of their appeal, as revealed by the New York Post, rests on an alleged “conflict of interest” involving Manhattan federal judge Lewis Kaplan and Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.
Trump's lawyer, Alina Haba, expressed her shock when she learned that Judge Kaplan and Roberta Kaplan, who are not related, previously worked together at the same prestigious law firm in the early 1990s.
The connection was uncovered by The Post columnist Charles Gasparino, following a tip that Judge Kaplan had previously been a mentor to Roberta Kaplan.
According to The Post, Judge Kaplan and Roberta Kaplan (no relation) worked at Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison in the early 1990s. Judge Kaplan served as a partner until his appointment to the federal court in 1994, while Roberta Kaplan worked there until 2016 before founding her own firm, Kaplan Hecker & Fink.
The New York Post reported:
Roberta Kaplan worked at Paul, Weiss Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison in Midtown from 1992 to 2016, before leaving to become a founding partner of Kaplan Hecker & Fink, according to her LinkedIn page.
During her early years at Paul Weiss, she served as an associate at the firm at the same time as Judge Kaplan, who was a partner there until 1994 when he was appointed to the federal court by then-President Bill Clinton.
Zach Sawyer, Roberta Kaplan's representative, insisted there was no conflict.
“They overlapped for less than two years in the early 1990s at a large law firm when he was a senior partner and she was a junior associate and she never worked with him,” said Sawyer, who declined to comment further.
But a former partner of Paul Weiss who asked to remain anonymous said that Roberta Kaplan, like all partners at the firm, did her best to distinguish herself to partners, including Louis Kaplan.
“Leo was like a mentor to her,” the former partner said.
Habba criticized the failure to disclose this previous professional relationship, describing it as “crazy” and “incest,” and a potential violation of the rules of judicial ethics.
“This is news to us,” Haba said. “We will include this in our appeal and take appropriate action. The fact that it was not disclosed is a violation of ethics.”
A jury on Friday ordered Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million to Jane Carroll for defamatory statements he made about her while he was in prison. president In response to her accusation of rape. It should be noted that the President of the United States enjoys a degree of immunity while in office.
“If immunity is not granted to a president, every president who leaves office will be immediately impeached by the opposing party. Without complete immunity, the President of the United States will not be able to properly perform his duties!” President Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The damages awarded included $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages.
Last year, Judge Kaplan found that Trump's appeal of one of Carroll's defamation lawsuits was “frivolous.”
This appeal was against a decision that denied Trump absolute presidential immunity for calling Carroll a liar. Kaplan's ruling stressed that Trump had offered no substantive reason to suggest he would succeed on appeal and deemed the appeal frivolous.
Judge Kaplan allowed E. Jean Carroll to sue President Trump for alleged rape. This is an issue that President Trump has vehemently denied.
Here's what you need to know about E. Jean Carroll, previously reported here on The Gateway Pundit. The judge deemed most of this information “inadmissible” according to John Lefebvre:
- She could not remember the date, month, season or year of the accident
- She's never told anyone about it, despite being openly obsessed with her sexuality
- The dress she claims she was wearing did not exist at the time
- Her description of the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman was inaccurate, making the sequence of events impossible
- Her lawsuit was funded by Jeffrey Epstein Ball and Democratic megadonor (and Nikki Haley) Reid Hoffman
- Democrats created a law (the Adult Survivors Act of 2022) to enable her to move forward with the lawsuit
- Her accusation is the exact plot of an episode of Law & Order (one of her “favorite shows”).
- Trump's Apprentice was also one of her favorite shows
- She has a history of falsely accusing men of rape, including Les Moonves
- “Most people think rape is sexy,” she told Anderson Cooper. “Think about fantasies.”
- She has made a career of promoting sexual promiscuity, even writing glowingly about sexual assault and naming her cat after a vagina
Carroll's interviews on television, her social media posts, and inconsistent information about her allegations should have been enough to throw out any case, but not with Judge Kaplan. He is against President Trump.
