NY Judge in Trump Case Had 'Insane' Conflict of Interest
Donald Trump’s legal team will reportedly use an “insane” and previously unknown “conflict of interest” between E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer and the judge in her defamation case against the former president as part of a move to toss a whopping $83.3 million jury
verdict.
Business commentator Charles Gasparino
wrote in the New York Post that Alina Habba — an attorney for the former president — said she was unaware until Saturday that Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan and Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan worked together in the early 1990s at the same law firm.
Gasparino wrote it was an unnamed source who told him the judge was once Roberta Kaplan’s “mentor.”
“It was never disclosed. It’s insane and so incestuous,” Habba told Gasparino, insisting neither Lewis Kaplan, 79, nor Roberta Kaplan, 57 — no relation to the judge — disclosed the “conflict of interest” and violation of judicial ethics rules.
Roberta Kaplan worked at Paul, Weiss Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison in Manhattan from 1992 to 2016, then left to become a founding partner of Kaplan Hecker & Fink, her LinkedIn
page shows.
“This is news to us,” Haba told Gasparino. “We are going to include this in our appeal and take appropriate measures. The fact it wasn’t disclosed is an ethics violation.”
According to the Post, Roberta Kaplan, during her early years at Paul Weiss, worked as an associate of the firm at the same time as Judge Kaplan, a partner until 1994, was appointed to the federal bench by then-President Bill Clinton.
Zak Sawyer, a rep for Roberta Kaplan, denied any conflict of interests, Gasparino wrote.
“They overlapped for less than two years in the early 1990s at a large law firm when he was a senior partner and she was a junior associate and she never worked for him,” Sawyer told Gasparino.
An ex-Paul Weiss partner, whom Gasparino did not name, said Roberta Kaplan did her best to distinguish herself before the partners, including Lewis Kaplan.
“Lew was like her mentor,” the former partner claimed, Gasparino wrote.
Neither Judge Kaplan nor a rep for Paul Weiss returned calls for comment, he added.
Trump was previously ordered to pay Carroll
$5 million in May after a jury found him liable for abusing her inside a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room in 1996.
On Friday, Judge Kaplan presided over the jury award of an $83.3 million to Carroll in Manhattan federal court, after the panel found Trump liable for slandering Carroll in 2019 when he dismissed her sexual assault claims as a “hoax” and called her a “whack job.”
Trump has said he’ll appeal both decisions.
!
Donald was publicly chuckholed.
