Donald Trump is using procedure to avoid paying for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll.
The steel-man runs through the ordinary substitution-of-counsel practice. When lead counsel withdraws mid-case, the new attorney of record needs reasonable time to get up to speed; federal courts in the Southern District of New York have standard practices for this. A complex civil case involving $5.8 million in disputed damages, with a separate $83.3 million defamation judgment under appeal, is not a file a new lawyer absorbs in a weekend. Judge Lewis Kaplan’s single-sentence order denying the extension, on this reading, was inflexibly rigid.
Roberta Kaplan’s response in Carroll v. Trump (S.D.N.Y.) noted that Trump nominated Smith to the court of appeals “more than five months” before the extension request and had “ample time to retain new counsel.” The substitution of counsel should have been completed at the point of nomination, not held in reserve until a payment deadline approached. The procedural ask is the substantive ask.
The second move is the conjoinment play. In one of his final acts as Trump’s counsel, Smith wrote to the Supreme Court asking the justices to “consider the petitions together” — the $5.8 million sexual-abuse judgment from the 2023 federal jury verdict and the $83.3 million defamation award from the 2024 Manhattan federal jury verdict in the second Carroll v. Trump action. The Supreme Court has already declined, without explanation, to review the 2023 verdict; the Court has not yet acted on the conjoinment request. If the Court grants it, the second case — which raises presidential immunity from statements Trump made about Carroll during his first term — becomes the vehicle for relitigating the first. Carroll’s lawyers have warned that a successful conjoined appeal could wipe out both judgments.
Two federal juries have found Trump liable — for the 2023 sexual abuse and the 2024 defamation — for approximately $89 million in total. The Supreme Court has now declined to overturn the first verdict, according to the Court’s order list. Trump has appealed the second judgment to the Second Circuit. Procedural delay is now the litigation strategy. Trump’s Truth Social post calling Kaplan a “Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge” is what attacking the trial judge personally looks like when the jury verdict is final and the appellate options have narrowed.
Judge Kaplan’s text-only order, entered on the case docket on July 4, 2026, requires the $5.8 million to be released from escrow by Tuesday unless Trump files additional arguments. If he does not, the money moves from the escrow account to Carroll’s attorneys. The judgment is final. The delay is not.