NEW YORK — Donald Trump repeatedly boasted about his wealth when he took the witness stand last month in New York state’s civil fraud trial against him, saying that he’s worth “billions of dollars more” than the estimates on his financial statements at the center of the case.
That testimony could haunt Trump in his next trial starting Jan. 16, when a jury will decide how much the former president should pay New York author E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after she accused him of rape. A judge has already held Trump liable for defamation, meaning the jury will only set damages.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, said in a filing late Wednesday that Trump’s recent testimony about his wealth in the unrelated civil fraud case should be shown to jurors at the defamation trial because it’s “relevant to the appropriate measure of punitive damages.” Such damages are intended to punish a defendant by hitting them where it hurts, and they can be set at any amount by a jury.
The request comes as Trump is seeking to delay the trial indefinitely. His lawyers on Thursday asked the federal appeals court in Manhattan to stay the case while he seeks reversal of a ruling barring his presidential immunity defense, either by a larger appellate panel or the U.S. Supreme Court.
The defamation trial is one of six Trump is facing as he campaigns to return to the White House in 2024, including four criminal cases. New York state’s fraud trial is on hiatus after 11 weeks of testimony, with closing arguments set for Jan. 11. A verdict in that case could be delivered even as the Carroll trial is underway. Trump says all the cases are part of a “witch hunt” against him.
Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, is seeking as much as $12 million in so-called compensatory damages for harm caused to her reputation when Trump issued statement from the White House calling her a liar and saying she wasn’t his “type.” She didn’t specify how much in punitive damages she wants, but such awards can easily skyrocket when a wealthy individual has been found liable for significant wrongdoing. Juries can take their wealth into consideration.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who is overseeing the defamation trial, on Thursday gave Trump until Dec. 28 to file objections to Carroll’s request to use his testimony in the civil fraud trial as evidence in her case.
Trump attorney Alina Habba didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Punitive Damages
Carroll, who went public with her rape claim in 2019, won a related sexual abuse lawsuit against Trump in May. A jury of six men and three women awarded her a total of $5 million in damages in that case after deliberating for less than three hours. Trump has appealed.
In the civil fraud case case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump is accused of inflating the value of his assets by as much as $3.6 billion a year to trick banks into giving him better terms on loans, reaping $250 million in “illegal profit” over more than a decade that the state wants to claw back.
‘Worth Billions’
Trump, who claims he gave banks conservative estimates of his wealth rather than exaggerations, said on the witness stand that he was “worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements” at the center of the case.
“The financial statements are just the opposite of what your Attorney General thought, and they are having a big problem with it,” Trump said. “I’m worth billions of dollars more, so anything that would be a little bit off would be nonmaterial, nonmaterial.”
Trump is currently set to testify in his defense in the Carroll trial, with his name appearing on his own witness list. Kaplan said in her filing that she has doubts he’ll show up, pointing to Trump’s last-minute decision to not testify a second time in the New York fraud case.
“While Trump has listed himself as a trial witness in this case, he recently made an eleventh-hour decision not to testify in another action, and we are preparing to try this case in light of that possibility,” Kaplan said in the filing.
Bergdorf Goodman
Carroll went public in 2019 with her claim that Trump raped her more than two decades earlier in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store. She sued him for defamation over statements he issued from the White House calling her a liar and questioning her motives. His status as president helped delay the case for years.
Carroll sued Trump again in 2022 for sexual battery under a New York law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on such claims. The second case went to trial first, and a jury in Manhattan held Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in violation of the state’s battery law.
The judge overseeing the defamation trial has barred Trump from trying to convince jurors that he didn’t assault Carroll, because the judge already found him liable in a so-called summary judgment. The defense instead will instead argue that Carroll wasn’t financially harmed by Trump’s statements and may have profited from the media attention.
By: Erik Larson, Bloomberg News©2023 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
