Who knew that Alina Habba was still employed by Trump after all of the money she cost him? More stalling and delays from team Trump trying to avoid having to come up with the money in the two civil cases he just lost. This Tuesday, Trump's lawyers asked the judge in the E. Jean Carroll case to either reduce the penalty he owes, or give him a new trial:
In a longshot bid, former President Donald Trump is asking the judge overseeing E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him to significantly reduce the $83.3 million jury award or grant a new trial.
Trump argued that Judge Lewis Kaplan wrongly prohibited him from defending himself during his brief testimony and that warrants a new trial.
In court filings Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers said Kaplan erred when he stopped Trump from testifying about “his own state of mind” and when he gave an “erroneous jury instruction on the definition of common-law malice.” Trump’s lawyers said the jury should have been told they needed to find that it was Trump’s “sole, exclusive desire to harm” Carroll.
“This Court’s erroneous decision to dramatically limit the scope of President Trump’s testimony almost certainly influenced the jury’s verdict, and thus a new trial is warranted,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
As the panel on CNN above discussed, not only is Trump trying to get the money reduced, now he's got his lawyer Alina Habba begging the judge for mercy and asking for a delay to post bond, which is due on Monday.
Lisa Rubin explained the new filing on Xitter:
So the self-proclaimed billionaire doesn't have the cash, and as the panel on CNN above discussed, that might mean his assets getting liquidated sooner and not later. It also raises the possibility he's running to foreign entities for financing, as Jeffrey Toobin discussed on AC360 this Wednesday as well:
Former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin said that given Donald Trump’s poor credit history, the former president’s only option for paying off his legal judgments may be to turn to foreign entities for financing.
Trump is currently in a world of financial pain thanks to multiple legal judgments against him. Last month, a Manhattan judge ordered Trump to pay $354 million to the state of New York after the ex-president was found liable for defrauding banks. With interest, the amount is north of $450 million. Separately, Trump was found liable for sexual assault and also defaming his victim. In those cases, he has been ordered to pay $5 million and $83.3 million, respectively. Additionally, he is racking up massive legal fees thanks to these civil cases, as well as the four criminal cases in which he is under indictment. [...]
On Wednesday’s AC360 on CNN, guest host John King asked Toobin about the possibility of a wealthy benefactor coming to Trump’s aid. [...]
Toobin said the answer depends, but also raised a troubling possibility:
It would depend on the structure, but I think the most interesting question about that is, what if he goes to foreign sources? What if he goes to Azerbaijan? He has a lot of business overseas. What if he goes to Russia? What if he goes and gets hundreds of millions of dollars from overseas? What does that mean if a candidate for president is on the hook for multiple, multiple millions of dollars to a foreign source? Because that, it seems to me, is the most likely source.
Banks at this point don’t want anything to do with him. Deutsche Bank has lived a nightmare for decades now because they’ve been associated with Trump. So, I think foreign is his only option. And that raises a very big can of worms.
Don't expect MAGA to blink an eye if Trump's got the Russians or the Saudis bailing him out. Fox will ignore it and they'll all just pretend it never happened while they rail on about made up Biden conspiracy theories.
