Donald Trump’s lawyers plan to challenge his staggering $83.3 million lawsuit loss to E. Jean Carroll, arguing an “insane” conflict of interest was at the heart of the case.
The former president’s legal team is appealing, alleging a conflict of interest between Carroll’s lawyer and the judge presiding over her defamation case.
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba claimed she was unaware that Judge Lewis Kaplan and Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan — who are not related — worked together in the early 1990s, with the judge serving as her “mentor,” the newspaper reported. New York Post.
‘It was never made public. It is insane and so incestuous,” Habba said, claiming that their alleged close relationship was never made public and that she only became aware of it after the conclusion of the case.
The former president’s legal team is appealing its $83.3 million loss in a defamation lawsuit against writer E. Jean Carroll, arguing there was a conflict of interest between Carroll’s lawyer and the judge presiding over the case .
On Friday, a jury awarded Carroll (pictured center, with her legal team after their victory) more than $60 million more than she sought for Trump’s scathing comments about her allegations that he stole her from a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. had raped. Trump has insisted he never met her
Habba continued: This is news to us. We will include this in our appeal and take appropriate measures. The fact that it has not been made public is an ethical violation.”
Before Roberta Kaplan became a founding partner at the law firm Kaplan, Keckler & Fink in 2016, she worked as a judge at Paul, Weiss Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison in Manhattan.
She started at the firm in 1992, according to her LinkedIn, where Judge Kaplan was a partner until he was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994.
In a statement to the Post, Zak Sawyer, representative of Roberta Kaplan, denied there was a conflict of interest.
“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 for him,” he said.
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba (pictured) claimed she was unaware that Judge Lewis Kaplan and Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan – who are not related – worked together in the early 1990s, with the judge reportedly serving as a “mentor.”
The conflict of interest allegations were supported by an anonymous former Weiss partner, who reportedly claimed that Roberta Kaplan – a junior associate – had gone to extra lengths to stand out to the managing partners.
“Lew looked like her mentor,” they claimed.