Donald Trump's attorney informed the court that they have obtained a $91.6 million bond to cover the amount owed to E. Jean Carroll in a defamation lawsuit as they appeal the jury's decision.
Lawyer Alina Habba submitted documents to show that Trump had obtained the bond from Federal Insurance Co., a unit of Chubb insurance company, to cover the $83.3 million judgment in the lawsuit, plus interest.
Habba also filed a notice indicating that Trump, the likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee, is appealing the verdict. Posting the bond was necessary to delay payment of the award until the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can rule on Trump's legal challenge.
The filings were made a day after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan refused to postpone a Monday deadline for posting a bond to ensure that Carroll, 80, can collect the judgment if it remains intact following appeals.
Trump is under financial pressure to set aside money for both the judgment in the Carroll case and a larger one in a lawsuit where he was found liable for lying about his wealth in financial statements given to banks.
A New York judge recently declined to stop the collection of a $454 million civil fraud penalty while Trump appeals. He now has until March 25 to either pay up or purchase a bond covering the full amount. In the meantime, interest on the judgment continues to accumulate at a rate of roughly $112,000 each day.
Trump's legal team has requested a stay on appeal for that judgment, cautioning that he might need to sell some properties to cover the penalty.
In New York, a civil jury found last May that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll in 1996 in the dressing room of a luxury department store in Manhattan.
Trump, 77, strongly denies the allegations, claiming that he did not know Carroll at the time and that the incident at a Bergdorf Goodman store never occurred.
The jury awarded Carroll $5 million to compensate her for both the alleged sexual assault and for damage to her reputation when Trump publicly stated that she fabricated the attack to promote a memoir.
A second trial was conducted in January to determine the additional amount Trump might owe Carroll for insulting comments made about her in 2019 while he was president. Kaplan instructed the jury to accept the previous jury's conclusion that the sexual abuse had taken place.
Trump was absent from the May trial. He briefly testified and regularly sat with defense lawyers at the January trial in Manhattan, though the judge threatened to remove him from the courtroom for making derogatory comments about the case that were potentially audible to jurors.