The New York federal district judge, Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the lawsuits brought against President Trump by the writer E. Jean Carroll, has rejected Mr. Trump’s request to immediately suspend the $83.3 million defamation verdict. 

This leaves Mr. Trump and his companies owing more than half a billion dollars in fines, when Ms. Carroll’s award is added to the much larger judgment for fraud stemming from New York State’s lawsuit against the Trump Organization.

As for Ms. Carroll’s award, “The Court declines to grant any stay, much less an unsecured stay without first having afforded plaintiff a meaningful opportunity to be heard,” Judge Kaplan wrote in his one page order, filed on Sunday morning. He gave Ms. Carroll until Thursday to respond to Mr. Trump’s motion.  

In January, a civil jury ruled that Mr. Trump should pay the former advice columnist $83 million for defaming her with comments he made in June 2019, shortly after an excerpt from her memoir was published in New York magazine. 

In her story, Ms. Carroll claimed that Mr. Trump raped her inside a dressing room on the lingerie floor of Bergdorf Goodman, the upscale Manhatten department store, in 1996. Mr. Trump, who was president when the excerpt was published, denied ever having met her. He said Ms. Carroll was “totally lying”, and that “she’s not my type,” and that the writer was using the publicity to sell her new book.

Ms. Carroll filed a lawsuit, alleging Mr. Trump’s insults caused her “emotional pain and suffering at the hands of the man who raped her, as well as injury to her reputation, honor and dignity.” Mr. Trump argued that he was acting in his official role as president when he responded to the article, and should thus be immune to the charges. The lawsuit was stuck in appeals proceedings for years. 

Meanwhile New York State enacted the Adult Survivors Act, which temporarily allowed survivors of sexual assault whose claims had expired outside the statute of limitations, to file a lawsuit against their alleged attacker. Ms. Carroll seized the opportunity and filed a second civil lawsuit, seeking damages for the decades-old rape charge and for other defaming statements Mr. Trump made in 2022. The case went to trial last May. The jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation, and awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million. That verdict is currently being appealed. 

Then, in January, the first lawsuit, for defamation, finally went to trial. Judge Kaplan, who presided over both cases, ordered that the findings of the previous verdict should be accepted as fact, forbidding any new debate about the alleged sexual assault or the 2022 defamation statements. He instructed the jury to focus solely on the comments Mr. Trump made in June 2019, when he called Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit “a total con job,” and to decide whether or not, and how badly they had harmed her.  

Ms. Carroll’s attorneys told the court that Mr. Trump’s remarks had “unleashed his followers … to threaten her life.” The writer testified that she slept with her father’s loaded gun next to her bed. Her attorneys further alleged that being called a liar by a sitting president had severely damaged the writer’s reputation. 

“She went from writing the nation’s leading advice column to running a Substack. And now the only assignment she gets is to write about Trump,” Ms. Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) told the jury. “It would cost Carroll a national reputation, and Trump has a global audience.” She suggested at least $24 million in compensatory damages. 

Interestingly, Ms. Carroll’s lawyers did not recommend any amount for the punitive damages. “The man who attacked her, came after her again,” Ms. Kaplan said in her closing statement, referring to a continuing volley of insults Mr. Trump had kept directing at Ms. Carroll, primarily via his social media platform, Truth Social. Since Mr. Trump had not stopped insulting her, Ms. Kaplan argued, the punitive damages should be high enough “to make him stop.” 

On one day during the trial, Mr. Trump posted 42 posts about Ms. Carroll in the span of 13 minutes, including photos and clips of interviews that he has previously shared about her. He pointed out that she had named her cat “Vagina.”

The jury awarded Ms. Carroll $65 million in punitive damages and another $18.3 million in compensatory damages, a staggeringly large amount. According to the defense’s latest court filings, the total sum amounts to $91.63 million, including fees and interest. 

If Mr. Trump wants to appeal the verdict, which he intends to, he has 30 days to secure a bond or deposit the money in an escrow account. The countdown started on February 8th, the day the judgment was finalized.   

Separately, the former president also faces the recent, much larger verdict from the civil fraud suit, brought against him by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. The judge in the non-jury trial, Arthur Engoron, fined Mr. Trump and his businesses over $450 million for falsifying business records in a decades-long scheme to gain favorable bank and insurance policies. That judgment was signed on February 23. Mr. Trump appealed that verdict on Monday, but has yet to put up the bond or the cash. If you combine Ms. James’ judgment with Ms. Carroll’s, Mr. Trump has to come up with over half a billion dollars in the next month.

The Washington Post reports that “Most of Trump’s wealth is tied up in real estate, and it’s not clear whether he has enough cash on hand to cover what he now owes.” Citing financial documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics in August, Mr. Trump claims to have bank and investment accounts “with a value of between $252 million and $924 million.” But he needs that money to run and maintain his properties, such as his golf courses.

To put up a bond, Mr. Trump needs to find an issuing agency willing to guarantee the payment to the court, if Mr. Trump should lose the appeal. That company, in return, will require its own collateral and charge fees, increasing Mr. Trump’s costs even further.               

Another question is, what companies are even willing to lend Mr. Trump money, after a New York judge just found him liable for business fraud. An anonymous source told the Washington Post that Mr. Trump’s legal team “began exploring whether multiple companies could provide portions of the bond, splitting the risk that any one of them would have to assume.”

Complicating the matter even further, is that the bond-issuing agency faces the risk of having to “collect from a former and possibly future president”, the Washington Post reports. If Mr. Trump loses the appeals, but wins the presidency, the companies would have to knock on the doors of the White House to get their money back. 

On Friday, defense attorney, Alina Habba, asked the court to pause the execution of the judgment in the defamation case until “30 days after the resolution of President Trump’s post-trial motions,” which the attorneys would submit no later than March 7th. 

“In the alternative,” Ms. Habba proposed a “partially secured stay” that would “authorize President Trump to post a bond in an appropriate fraction of the judgment.” In essence, Mr. Trump is asking to delay the payment or to reduce the sum.   

“The punitive damages award is plainly excessive,” Ms. Habba wrote in Friday’s motion, referring to the $65 million, “it violates both the Constitution and the federal common law.” 

Ms. Carroll did not provide any medical records to prove Mr. Trump’s remarks had in fact caused her emotional and mental distress, “much less any long-term physical or emotional effects,” Ms. Habba continued. 

“There is a strong probability that the disposition of post-trial motions will substantially reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of the judgment,” Ms. Habba wrote. And if the judgment would ultimately be reduced, enforcing it now could cause Mr. Trump “Irreparable Injury”. 

“President Trump,” his attorneys noted, “faces the prospect of posting a bond of $91.63 million—a sizable bond which will come with very substantial, non-recoverable financial costs.”

Judge Kaplan refused to immediately grant the request. “Twenty-five days after the jury verdict in this case,” he wrote in his ruling, and “only shortly before the expiration,” of the judgment, “Mr. Trump has moved for an ‘administrative stay’ of enforcement pending the filing and disposition of any post-trial motions that he may file.” The judge added, “He seeks that relief without posting any security.” 

Ms. Carroll’s attorneys have until 5 pm on Thursday to file their response. The defense has until March 2 to submit its reply. Then the judge will make his final decision.    

Since the verdict, Mr, Trump has refrained from directly insulting Ms. Carroll, although he has posted derogatory news articles about her on his Truth Social. In an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, Ms. Carroll said that if Mr. Trump were to defame her again, she would sue him again.