NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump has been ordered by a federal judge to put up a $92 million bond to secure a jury award for writer E. Jean Carroll, should it survive appeals. The bond was approved by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan on Tuesday, following an agreement among lawyers that there was no dispute about it.
Trump, the front-runner for the Republican 2024 presidential race, offered the bond as his legal team appeals the verdict to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan. Over the weekend, at a campaign rally, Trump resumed his verbal attacks on Carroll, questioning her credibility and denying her accusation of rape in 1996.
In response, Carroll’s lawyer warned that a third defamation lawsuit could be filed if Trump continued to make these verbal attacks. Trump had largely stopped his public attacks on Carroll following a $83.3 million defamation award in January, which was instructed to assess damages from his 2019 statements as president, and another $5 million award by a Manhattan jury in May.
The 2022 jury concluded that Trump had defamed Carroll and sexually abused her, but it did not find evidence that he raped her according to New York state’s definition of rape. However, the judge later explained that the jury’s findings were in line with the definition of rape in some jurisdictions.
While Trump attended nearly every day of the January trial, expressing his dissatisfaction with the case, he was only permitted to testify briefly. His testimony was restricted from refuting the jury’s conclusions from the previous year. Carroll first went public with her accusations against Trump in a 2019 memoir.
In addition to the ongoing legal battles with Carroll, Trump is also facing a $454 million civil fraud penalty and four criminal cases. The civil fraud case ruled against him in New York state, adding to the increasingly complex legal challenges he is currently facing.