Donald J. Trump posted $91.6 million bail Friday in a defamation case he recently lost to writer E. Jean Carroll, averting a possible legal and financial disaster just days before the deadline to conclude the agreement.
The bond, provided by an outside insurance company, will prevent Ms. Carroll from collecting the judgment while Mr. Trump appeals.
A federal jury awarded Ms. Carroll $83.3 million in January, and Mr. Trump recently asked that the judgment be stayed. The judge presiding over the case, Lewis A. Kaplan, denied Mr. Trump’s request for a preliminary stay, pressuring Mr. Trump to come up with the money himself or secure bail.
As Monday’s deadline approached, Mr. Trump posted the bond, which is higher than the $83.3 million judgment amount because the former president is also responsible for the interest.
The bond is a promise from the company offering it — Federal Insurance Company, an arm of insurance giant Chubb — to cover Mr. Trump’s judgment if he loses his appeal and doesn’t pay. In exchange, Mr. Trump must pay the company a premium and give guarantees, including as much money as possible.
In a court filing Friday morning, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, asked Judge Kaplan to approve the bond as «adequate and sufficient» to prevent Ms. Carroll from collecting the reward before the appeal of Mr. Trump is ruled.
In a statement, Ms. Habba said she was “highly confident” that an appeals court “will overturn this egregious judgment,” citing “numerous damaging errors” made during the trial.
A Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in a statement that the bond was posted «for the full amount of the baseless judgment in the Democratic-funded Carroll Witch Hunt case, which is the subject of of an appeal and a trial.
Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, declined to comment Friday. Ms Carroll herself called the bail a “prodigious amount” in a social media post.
“Although the illustrious Robbie Kaplan is strong enough to rip a golden toilet off the floor of Trump Tower and throw it out the window, this bond saves Robbie from having to show up with the U.S. marshals on Monday to do so,” wrote Ms. Carroll. .
The terms of Mr. Trump’s bond deal have not been made public, but bonding companies often charge fees of between 1 and 3 percent and require sufficient collateral to cover the bond.
Chubb, in a statement, said it does not comment on “client-specific” information but provides appeal bonds in the normal course of business. “These bonds are an ordinary and important part of the American justice system, protecting the rights of defendants and plaintiffs,” the company said.
Judge Kaplan, in a brief order Friday, gave Ms. Carroll until 11 a.m. Monday to file a response to the proposed bond, and said that if she had any objection to its form or amount, Judge would hold a hearing in the afternoon on the matter.
The bond in Ms. Carroll’s case removes, at least for now, just one of many looming threats from Mr. Trump’s legal brief, which also includes four criminal indictments, the first of which will go to trial in about two weeks .
In another civil case, Mr. Trump faces a judgment of more than $450 million imposed by a New York state judge in a fraud lawsuit filed by Attorney General Letitia James. Judge Arthur F. Engoron sided with Ms. James, concluding that Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated her net worth to obtain favorable loan terms and other financial benefits.
Mr. Trump recently asked a state appeals court to accept only $100 million bail in the case. His lawyers said it would be «impossible» to obtain bail for the full amount, $454 million, including interest.
Only one appeals court judge rejected his request, but Mr. Trump can try again before a full panel of five appeals court judges.
Unless this panel grants him a break, Mr. Trump will have to post bail for the full amount by March 25 — which happens to be the opening day of his first criminal trial. If he fails, Ms. James should act quickly to recover, seizing the former president’s bank accounts and potentially even some of his New York properties.
Although Mr. Trump estimates his net worth to be in the billions, much of it comes from the value of his properties. He has more than $350 million in cash and investments that he can sell quickly, according to a recent New York Times analysis, far short of what he owes between the fraud case and the defamation verdict. .
The award was given to Ms. Carroll during a January trial over how much she should receive in damages for defamatory statements Mr. Trump made about her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape – and for his continued attacks on her since, on social media, at press conferences and during the trial itself.
Mr Trump was found responsible in a separate trial last year for sexually abusing Ms Carroll in the mid-1990s and making a defamatory social media post about her in 2022. The jury in that case awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million, and Mr. Trump then deposited about $5.6 million in cash into a court account pending his appeal of that verdict.
Before securing bail in the second case, Mr. Trump’s lawyers made an alternative proposal: that Judge Kaplan allow Mr. Trump to post bail «in a fraction of the amount» of the sentence. The defense asked for a lower bond while the judge considered the former president’s request to have the verdict overturned.
Ms. Carroll’s lawyers had urged the judge to reject Mr. Trump’s request for a stay.
They argued that the former president provided no information about his finances or the nature and location of his assets; that he had not clarified how much of his assets were liquid or explained how Ms. Carroll could go about recovering her judgment; and that he had failed to address the risks associated with the broad judgment obtained by Ms. James’ office as well as the numerous criminal charges Mr. Trump faces «that could permanently end his career as a businessman «.
«He simply asks the court to ‘trust me’ and proposes, in a case with an $83.3 million judgment against him, that the court file the equivalent of a paper napkin, signed by the less worthy of borrower trust,” Ms. Carroll’s lawyers wrote.