(AFP) – Donald Trump has obtained a bond sufficient to cover an $83.3 million penalty as the former president appeals a jury’s verdict in a sexual assault defamation case, court documents showed Friday.
On January 26 Trump was ordered by a jury in New York to compensate the writer E. Jean Carroll, whom he was found to have sexually assaulted and defamed, a decision he is now challenging in a higher court.
Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said that he had obtained a bond of $91.6 million, according to a document filed with a Manhattan court.
He was ordered to pay $65 million in punitive damages after the jury found Trump acted maliciously in his many public comments about Carroll, $7.3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million for a reputational repair program.
Trump was required to either post the full amount of the compensation as he appeals, or a bond that could be executed in the event that his challenge is unsuccessful.
The judge who oversaw the case denied his team’s application to postpone a Monday deadline to post a bond to cover the penalty, US media reported.
Trump — whom a jury found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a separate federal civil case in New York — used his Truth Social platform to fire off a spate of insulting messages attacking Carroll, the trial and the judge, whom he called “an extremely abusive individual.”
He was not required to attend the trial or to testify. However, he has used the case, as well as others he faces, to generate heated media coverage and to fuel his claims of being victimized as he campaigns for a return to the White House in November’s election.
Trump has also been faced with the task of securing a bond for his much larger civil fraud ruling which requires him to pay $355 million plus significant and mounting interest.
His lawyers offered a $100 million bond to partially cover that penalty as he appeals, but that was rejected by an appeals judge. –
© 2024 AFP
