Joe Biden threatened to not participate in a debate with Donald Trump if he doesn’t ‘behave.’
The jury have issued a verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation complaint against former President Donald Trump. However, the sparring between the lawyers continues unabated — including Trump’s attorney accusing of a conflict of interest that was swiftly withdrawn after Carroll’s attorney responded via Mediaite.
It has been noted on Friday that a New York federal jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages that comprised of compensatory damages of $7.3 million for emotional harm and $11 million in “reputational repair,” plus $65 million in punitive damages — related to her accusations that Trump had sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s and then defamed her in comments he made denying the accusations, including verbal comments and social media posts he continued to make throughout the trial.
A New York jury awarded $5 million in damages last May after finding Trump civilly responsible for harassing and defaming Carroll through sexual abuse. In addition to repeatedly reprimanding Trump’s attorney Alina Habba for trying to argue that Trump did not rape or assault Carroll after those claims had already been decided, Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan oversaw both trials. Habba also made a number of mistakes when it came to trying to comply with federal civil procedure rules for entering evidence.
In a letter to the court on Monday, Habba accused Judge Kaplan of having a conflict of interest with Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney. The letter referenced a New York Post article in which an unidentified partner at the judge’s previous law firm stated that the judge and Roberta Kaplan had a “mentor-mentee relationship.”
Roberta Kaplan fired back Tuesday in a sharply-worded letter to the court, blasting Habba for making “false allegations” that were “utterly baseless.”
As Kaplan the attorney wrote in the letter, she and Kaplan the judge did work for the Paul, Weiss law firm, but their tenure overlapped by less than two years when she was “a very junior associate” and it was “more than thirty years ago.” Kaplan added, contrary to Habba’s accusations of a “mentor-mentee relationship,” the two Kaplans did not work closely together, or even together at all:
During that relatively brief period more than thirty years ago, I do remember the Paul, Weiss partners with whom I worked and none of them was Your Honor. More specifically, I have no recollection from that time period of ever interacting with Your Honor on a case, participating with Your Honor in a client or case-related meeting, or attending a court proceeding with Your Honor. In fact, I remember no direct interaction from that time period with Your Honor at all.
Fresh – President Biden will only debate Trump if he behaves. pic.twitter.com/aKCvq4mux5
— InsidersHut (@InsidersHut) March 8, 2024
