According to a recent report from Politico legal reporter Erica Orden, one of former President Donald Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, was threatened by Judge Kaplan with jail time during the closing day of the defamation trial hearing on Friday, January 26. That apparently came when she was attempting to project and refer to slides not previously entered as evidence.
As background, the trial was a defamation case brought by Jean Carroll against former President Donald Trump over comments he made about her when denying her rape allegations about him. The jury settled on a jaw-dropping $83.3 million in damages for Ms. Carroll over Trump’s comments about her. Of that incredible sum, $11 million is meant for a public “reputation repair” campaign for Carroll. $7.3 million is meant to atone for the emotional harm that former President Trump’s 2019 statements caused Carroll, and the remaining $65 million is in punitive damages against former President Trump, as the jury found the statements were malicious.
In any case, Orden posted on X about the incident on that Friday morning. In her post on Judge Kaplan’s threat, Orden wrote, “Judge Kaplan to Alina Habba: ‘You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Now, sit down.’ This came after Madaio and Habba were arguing to include a slide showing tweets they hadn’t entered as evidence.”
Habba, after the trial, explained that she remains proud to stand by Trump during his legal troubles. She said, “I have sat on trial after trial for months in this state, the state of New York Attorney General Letitia James, and now this week, weeks, weeks, why because President Trump is leading in the polls, and now we see what you get in New York. So don’t get it twisted. Whoever asked me that question. I am so proud to stand with President President Trump. But I am not proud to stand with what I saw in that courtroom.”
Continuing, Habba alleged that Judge Kaplan was biased and that even a single “real journalist” could have understood the justice of Trump’s cause, saying, “Before I walked into court, that judge decided that every single defense President Trump had we were not allowed to raise in front of the jury. It is in writing and I encouraged the journalists, the real journalist to take the minute to look at his orders. There was no proof and I couldn’t prove that she didn’t bring in the dress. There was no DNA. There was no expert. My experts were denied two of them two of them were denied to come in.”
She then used that to explain why she found the jury’s verdict so wrong, saying, “That is a violation of everything I stand for and that is why I stand with Trump. And that is why so many Americans are so proud that he is running again and so excited to run to the ballot box but don’t get it twisted. We are seeing a violation of our justice system, ladies and gentlemen.”
Emphasizing the perceived injustice of the situation, she said, “You are not allowed to be stripped of every defense that you have. You are not allowed to be told that you can’t bring it up. And imagine a point where a judge tells the lawyer before your client, the former president of the United States, the leading candidate, and obvious night nominee for the Republican party before he takes the stand to defend himself.”
Watch Habba here:
Trump, for his part, posted on Truth Social about the verdict. He wrote, “Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party. Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!“
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