The lawyer for author E. Jean Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, threatened to pursue sanctions against Trump lawyer Alina Habba for alleging that the federal judge presiding over their clients’ defamation trial did not reveal a conflict of interest. Alina Habba made this allegation in a court document on Monday, accusing Roberta Kaplan and US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who heard Carroll’s lawsuits against Trump, of having a close professional relationship at the law firm in the early 1990s.
She requested the judge to “provide defense counsel with all of the relevant facts” related to a motion to vacate last week’s jury verdict of $83.3 million awarded to Carroll by Trump for defaming her. Habba has also indicated that she will be appealing the verdict.
“The underlying defamation case tried last year, and the damages trial completed last week, were both litigations in which there were many clashes between Your Honor and defense counsel,” Habba wrote. “We believe, and will argue on appeal, that the Court was overtly hostile towards defense counsel and President Trump, and displayed preferential treatment towards Plaintiff’s counsel.”
In recent pleadings, Habba cited a New York Post article quoting an anonymous former Paul Weiss law firm partner where both the judge and former partner Roberta Kaplan once worked. The article suggested that Judge Kaplan had mentored Roberta Kaplan while they both served at the firm during overlapping periods. On the basis of this claim, Habba asked for a full disclosure of the particulars about this alleged relationship, citing concerns over judicial impartiality. Furthermore, she announced the intention to appeal the $83.3 million jury award given to Carroll.
As part of a detailed response, Roberta Kaplan challenged the legitimacy of the charge, contesting that her overlap time with Judge Kaplan at Paul Weiss was under two years and was over thirty years in the past. She maintained a lack of recollection of direct contact with the then-judge and emphasized that any previous connection was public knowledge. In her Tuesday epistle, Kaplan stated that she had no recollection of ever having contact with the judge during his time at Paul, Weiss.
“I remember no direct interaction from that time period with Your Honor at all,” she wrote. “This is hardly surprising since at that time, I was a very junior associate at a large New York law firm and Your Honor was one of the leaders of the Paul, Weiss litigation department.”
Roberta Kaplan also pointed out the dubious origin of the New York Post’s story, proposing that it only emerged following Habba’s own remarks to the press regarding an “insane and so incestuous” conflict of interest. Kaplan dismissed the narrative as a deliberate attempt to discredit the jury’s decision, painting it as the result of a “corrupt system.”
The Carroll lawyer also challenged the source of the Post’s allegation.
“In that regard, it is telling that the article in the New York Post only appeared after Ms. Habba’s own statement to the media last weekend where she claimed that only after trial concluded did she learn that Your Honor and I both previously worked at Paul, Weiss, referring to a ‘conflict of interest’ that is ‘insane and so incestuous,'” Roberta Kaplan further opined.
Roberta Kaplan replied the unnamed partner mentioned in the Post’s article “(if he even exists) clearly has a very flawed memory about events that occurred three decades ago.” She added that she never worked for the then-judge while at the firm and did not remember any direct interactions with him.
Their concurrent terms was also a public figure “matter of public record,” the lawyer included, accusing Habba of attempting to resist a “false narrative” to recast the jury verdict as “the product of a corrupt system.”
In her own missive earlier, Roberta Kaplan stated that Trump and his lawyer “have pushed a false narrative of judicial bias so that they could characterize any jury verdict against Trump as the product of a corrupt system,” and referred to one of the judge’s earlier decisions to note that such grumblings had no impact in a court.
She also referred to the likelihood of pursuing sanctions on Habba for the allegation.
“Whereas Ms. Habba concludes her letter by describing this as a ‘troubling matter,’ what is truly troubling is the content and timing of her baseless accusations of impropriety on the part of E. Jean Carroll’s counsel or the Court, she wrote. “Therefore, while we wished to file our response to Ms. Habba’s letter forthwith,
