Trump Gets $91.6 Million Bond While He Appeals Verdict In E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case

Former President Donald Trump has obtained a bond that will prevent E. Jean Carroll from immediately enforcing an $83.3 million defamation verdict while Trump appeals.

Trump said in court papers Friday that he has secured the $91.6 million bond, which is higher than the verdict itself because it covers interest. The notice came one day after Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Trump’s motion to put off a Monday deadline for him to post the bond.

A federal jury issued the massive verdict against Trump in January in a lawsuit brought by Carroll, a magazine writer who accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s. The case focused on defamatory comments that Trump made in 2019 denying her claim, as well as repeated verbal attacks that Trump launched against Carroll, even during the trial itself.

Trump is appealing the verdict. The bond is an arrangement with a private company — in this case, Federal Insurance Co. — that promises to pay the judgment to Carroll if Trump loses his appeal.

If Trump had not secured the bond (or paid cash into a court escrow account himself), Carroll could have begun collecting the judgment during the appeal, perhaps by seizing Trump’s assets or bank accounts. The bond blocks her legal team from initiating those collection efforts but guarantees that she will be paid eventually if appellate courts uphold the verdict.

Federal Insurance Co. is a division of the large insurer Chubb. It was not immediately clear what property or other investments Trump pledged as collateral in order to get the bond.

The bond is dated Tuesday and signed by Trump and a representative of the insurance company. That means it was available several days before Kaplan declined Trump’s request to postpone the deadline.

Last year, Trump put $5.5 million in a trust account while he appealed another jury’s $5 million verdict in a separate suit brought by Carroll over her claim that Trump raped her at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the 1990s.

Trump has repeatedly declared that the incident never happened, but the jury in last year’s case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Based on that verdict, Kaplan instructed the jury at this year’s trial that the assault had already been proved and that Trump’s comments about Carroll were defamatory, so the jurors’ only task was to determine the amount of additional damages Trump owed her.

The maneuvering over the bond to guarantee payment to Carroll comes as Trump is trying to come up with a similar pledge to cover a $454 million judgment a judge imposed on him and two of his children in February in a suit New York Attorney General Tish James filed alleging pervasive fraud in Trump’s real estate empire.

Keeping a verdict of that size at bay while it is on appeal would normally require a bond in excess of half a billion dollars. Trump’s lawyers have said it is impossible to get a bond of that magnitude and have asked that the bond amount be reduced to around $100 million.

Two judges have turned down that request, but Trump’s appeal on that question is pending, with a state court panel expected to issue a decision before a March 25 deadline he faces to come up with a bond in the fraud case.