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The most annoying thing, from a legal perspective, about Donald Trump is how he plays the delay game, drawing cases out far longer than any other litigant could get away with. He relentlessly files borderline (and sometimes outright) frivolous motions and fights every step of the way, using every motion to reconsider and every other procedural tool available, even when it’s hopeless.
That’s how it felt today in the E. Jean Carroll case. We’ll get to what happened during the day in a minute, but first let’s start with how it ended, just after 10 p.m. ET. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied Trump’s request to stay District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order that it was time for Trump to pay Carroll the $5 million, plus post-judgment interest, that he owes her. The Second Circuit ruled just hours after Trump asked for the stay.
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Trump, of course, isn’t done yet. Next, he’ll ask the Supreme Court for a stay. Prediction: It will be similarly unavailing. Stick a fork in this case. It’s done.
You’ll recall it’s not actually Trump who has to pay up here. That’s because, as a condition of being able to appeal the judgment in Carroll’s favor in the first place, he had to deposit $5.5 million into the Court Registry Investment System (“CRIS”). He did that on June 28, 2023, shortly after Carroll won the case at trial. So Judge Kaplan’s order is actually directed to the Clerk of Court, who oversees the CRIS. The Judge wrote: “The Clerk is respectfully directed to disburse” $5 million in judgment plus interest to Carroll’s lawyers on her behalf.
Unlike other times when courts have granted Trump a stay pending appeal at the same time they issued an order, Judge Kaplan did not do that here. That forced Trump’s lawyers to file their notice of appeal and immediately ask the Second Circuit for a stay before the Clerk could disburse the funds. “The need for an administrative stay here is acute,” they wrote. “The district court’s order directs the Clerk to disburse the funds, and once entered that order may be executed at any time.”
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Trump argued that once the funds are "distributed to third parties, they likely will not be recoverable—rendering any stay this Court might later grant, and any relief President Trump might later obtain on appeal, ineffective.” But that argument didn’t stick the landing for him.
Underneath it all is Trump’s effort to conflate Carroll’s two victories: this one, based on his defamation of Carroll after he left office, and the other case, involving statements he made while he was president. He has a tenuous argument that some form of immunity may apply in that case—an argument the Second Circuit rejected. But that case is not this case, and there is no reason to delay this one because of the other.
Now it’s up to the Supreme Court, which has already denied certiorari in this case, to enforce its own ruling. It has before it Trump’s motion to reconsider its refusal to hear the case, which it can deny at any moment, along with his motion for a stay of Judge Kaplan’s disbursement order. Unless Trump simply gives up and gives in to the inevitable by letting the money he deposited into the court’s fund go to Carroll, his lawyers will need to get an appeal and a stay application to the Supreme Court immediately. If the Court does not order a stay, the Clerk is free to disburse the funds at any time because a judge has ordered that they be disbursed, and no stay is in place.
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After her win in the $83.3 million defamation case, which is still on appeal, Carroll responded to a question about how she intended to spend the money like this: “I’d like to give the money to something Donald Trump hates. If it’ll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent.”
How splendid. Sometimes justice happens. We’re close.
If you want to revisit some of our earlier columns on the two Carroll defamation cases, here are a few to start with:
Trump has spent years using a delay game to win. Tonight, in E. Jean Carroll’s case, the courts moved fast, signaling that at least in this case, time’s up. Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse for all of it! Your paid subscriptions make this newsletter possible.
We’re in this together,
Joyce