DAN RATHER: Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport

 

Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport

There is something we can do to beat Trump

DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY FEB 29

Credit: Getty Images

Wouldn’t it be convenient if the courts were the catalyst for keeping Donald Trump from ever setting foot inside the White House again? But here’s a reality check: The courts, including the Supreme Court, are not likely to be democracy’s savior. The hard work of keeping the American system of government alive and thriving is up to the voting public. The American people must vote in overwhelming numbers if the now far right-wing Republican Party is to be denied a return to presidential power.

It is as simple as that. And as complicated.

This truth was rammed home again on Wednesday when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Donald Trump’s appeal of total immunity while in office, further delaying his prosecution for insurrection. What seems elementary to those of us who watched in horror as rioters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, apparently takes a months-long “big think” from the high court. Simply hearing the appeal will push a trial closer to the election, or possibly past it. Hard as it is to accept, prosecuting the person the government believes responsible for insurrectionists forcing their way into the Capitol that day might never happen. 

The fact that the Supreme Court is even considering this case is horrific. The New York Times has already pointed out, “Nothing in the Constitution or federal statutes says that sitting presidents are immune from prosecution, and no court has ruled that they have any such shield.” Constitutional law expert David Schultz argues that our Founding Fathers were concerned that a president should not be above the law.

“We have language from some framers [of the Constitution] indicating … once they’ve left office there's no immunity and they could be charged with the crime,” he told ABC News.

There should be no question whether a president — any president — is above the law; however, the Supreme Court’s actions yesterday suggest they believe otherwise. Now, who among us still believes that the country can count on a Supreme Court packed with Trump’s appointees to save American democracy?

The presidential election is 250 days from today. Public opinion polls remind all that Trump, at this point, has a good chance of winning. Unless there is a groundswell of exceptionally heavy voter turnout. That means if Democrats want to win, they must redouble mobilizing, volunteering, knocking on doors, registering, and helping others register in time to vote on November 5. Anyone and everyone can make a difference. For Democrats and others who oppose autocratic rule, complacency and apathy are the enemy. The headline bears repeating: Democracy is not a spectator sport. Watching the political news coverage and perhaps voting when Election Day comes is not enough.

In 2020, 69 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, the highest voter turnout in a modern national election. While that is a considerable achievement, still 31 percent chose to stay home. To have a large turnout, voters need to be motivated to cast a ballot for a candidate or at the very least against one.  

Anyone seeking to beat back a return to Trumpism must ensure that friends and family understand fundamental freedoms are at stake. One candidate promises a dictatorship on day one, pledges revenge on his opponents, cozies up to America’s enemies, is under dozens of criminal indictments, and vows to bring forth a religious theocracy that will reach into our bedrooms and our medical institutions to restrict basic fundamental rights, to control what people do with their own bodies. 

How about policy debates? In every presidential election during my lifetime, there have been plenty of them. Not this year. It’s like paramedics arriving at a car accident and giving them the choice of treating the victims immediately or remaining in the ambulance debating the merits of emergency medicine. Treat the victims immediately! Save democracy now! That, metaphorically, is where we are. This is a 68-car pileup about to happen, and some in the media just want to discuss auto safety. 

America has faced existential crises in the past. I vividly remember covering the Civil Rights Movement and seeing sights in America that I didn’t want to believe were real. But the country finally faced up to some of it and came out on the other side stronger for it. By no means perfectly but better. 

I would suggest we stop wringing our hands and wishing there were other choices. This is our reality. Biden versus Trump. It is not biased to say that right now is the time to face that reality. There are two main candidates for president. Short of divine intervention — or something close to that — one of them will be sworn in on January 20, 2025. The Supreme Court’s latest boost for candidate Trump is just another reminder that the only way to ensure his defeat is at the polls with record voter turnout. 

Note: If you support independent journalism bringing you critical information when the corporate media fails us, please consider joining as a supporting member. It allows me to keep critical pieces like this free for those who cannot afford it, in an election season where we need everyone to see it. Thank you. 

The Fed Pretends to Send a Warning to Wall Street’s Mega Banks on Derivatives and Counterparty Risk

 SUBSCRIBE TO THIS DAILY NEWSLETTER TO RECEIVE TIMELY REPORTS!

The Fed Pretends to Send a Warning to Wall Street’s Mega Banks on Derivatives and Counterparty Risk

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 29, 2024 ~

On Tuesday, the Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve, Michael Barr, delivered a speech at a risk management conference in Manhattan. Barr’s objective was to convince conference attendees that the Fed has its eye on the ball when it comes to Wall Street mega banks and their counterparties who are sitting on the opposite sides of derivative trades totaling tens of trillions of dollars. (Yes, trillions.)

The most illuminating and dangerous elements of Barr’s speech are what he didn’t say.

To remind attendees of what could happen if counterparty risks were not managed properly, Barr cited Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) and Archegos Capital Management.

LTCM was a hedge fund stocked with the so-called “smartest men in the room,” including two Nobel laureates, who fed mathematical formulas into computers that generated trades using astronomical levels of leverage. Of course, this resulted in the brainiacs blowing up the firm in the fall of 1998 during the Russian debt crisis, putting their counterparties – the big trading houses on Wall Street – at grave risk. The New York Fed had to corral the big boys on Wall Street into its conference room and hammer out a multi-bank bailout of the teetering hedge fund.

What happened at Archegos can best be summed up with our headline of 2021: Archegos: Wall Street Was Effectively Giving 85 Percent Margin Loans on Concentrated Stock Positions – Thwarting the Fed’s Reg T and Its Own Margin Rules.

LTCM occurred in 1998, before Sandy Weill, the Bill Clinton administration, Robert Rubin, the New York Times and the Federal Reserve had ushered in the most dangerous banking era in U.S. history by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act and allowing the trading casinos on Wall Street to merge with giant, federally-insured, deposit-taking banks. This explosive situation continues to this day, as do the never-ending Fed bailouts.

The biggest explosions in U.S. banking history from derivatives and insolvent counterparties were, of course, neither LTCM or Archegos. They were Lehman Brothers and AIG – both of which owned federally-insured banks at the time of their demise in 2008, thanks to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. The U.S. government seized control of AIG the following day and “made over $182 billion available to assist AIG between September 2008 and April 2009” according to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). $90 billion of the $182 billion went in the front door of AIG and out the back door to pay 100 cents on the dollar on credit derivative trades that had been made between a dodgy unit of AIG and the major trading houses on Wall Street.

According to documents released by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), at the time of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy it had more than 900,000 derivative contracts outstanding and had used the largest banks on Wall Street as its counterparties to many of these trades. The FCIC data shows that Lehman had more than 53,000 derivative contracts with JPMorgan Chase; more than 40,000 with Morgan Stanley; over 24,000 with Citigroup’s Citibank; over 23,000 with Bank of America; and almost 19,000 with Goldman Sachs.

Below is a share price chart of what derivatives contagion looked like on Wall Street in 2008.

So why was Michael Barr not talking about 2008, Lehman Brothers, AIG or the insanely interconnected trading houses on Wall Street in his speech on Tuesday?

It’s because, as we reported on February 13, Barr has allowed five Wall Street mega banks to hold $223 trillion in derivatives today, 83 percent of all derivatives at 4,600 banks in the U.S.

For more than two decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations in Washington have shown a sycophantic subservience to tolerating the catastrophic level of derivatives at the Wall Street mega banks while simultaneously allowing them to own federally-insured, taxpayer-backstopped commercial banks.

This sycophantic tolerance has existed despite repeated warnings from academics and federal researchers. As far back as 2016, researchers have been sounding the alarms on counterparty risk and the failure of the Fed’s stress tests to properly measure that risk.

In a report issued in March 2016 by the Office of Financial Research (OFR), a federal agency created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010, the OFR brought the illusory nature of the Fed’s oversight of counterparty risk into focus.

The OFR researchers who conducted the study, Jill Cetina, Mark Paddrik, and Sriram Rajan, found that the Fed’s stress tests are measuring counterparty risk for the trillions of dollars in derivatives held by the largest banks on a bank by bank basis. The real problem, according to the researchers, is the contagion that could spread rapidly if one big bank’s counterparty was also a key counterparty to other systemically important Wall Street banks. The researchers write:

“A BHC [bank holding company] may be able to manage the failure of its largest counterparty when other BHCs do not concurrently realize losses from the same counterparty’s failure. However, when a shared counterparty fails, banks may experience additional stress. The financial system is much more concentrated to (and firms’ risk management is less prepared for) the failure of the system’s largest counterparty. Thus, the impact of a material counterparty’s failure could affect the core banking system in a manner that CCAR [one of the Fed’s stress tests] may not fully capture.” [Italic emphasis added.]

In Barr’s speech on Tuesday, he stated that “…alongside this year’s stress test results, we will publish the aggregate results of several exploratory analyses, including analysis of the resilience of the globally systemically important banks to the simultaneous default of their five largest hedge fund counterparties.”

But according to an OFR study released in July 2021, it’s not hedge funds where banks have the largest counterparty risk. It’s corporations.

For just how long this insidious behavior between the Fed and the Wall Street mega banks has been going on, we suggest reading the seminal book on the subject, Arthur Wilmarth’s Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act.

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/02/the-fed-pretends-to-send-a-warning-to-wall-streets-mega-banks-on-derivatives-and-counterparty-risk/

POLITICO Nightly: Life after Mitch

 

BY CHARLIE MAHTESIAN Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. | Francis Chung/POLITICO THE BIG SUCK — The stunning announcement that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will not seek another term as Republican leader has predictably triggered a succession battle that’s rife with intrigue. Texas Sen. John Cornyn is already in. So is Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota. The third of the “Three Johns” in the hunt, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, is talking to colleagues about it. There could be other candidates. But there’s a bigger question here that isn’t being discussed — why would anyone want the job? Cornyn acknowledged “the Senate is broken” in his statement announcing his bid. It was a tacit admission that this isn’t the Senate of lore, the storied institution at the heart of Robert Caro’s classic, “Master of the Senate.” Rather, it is a diminished chamber, inhabited for the most part by small, easily cowed figures and polarized to the bone. In one measure of that polarization, only five states now feature senators of different parties — the smallest number of split delegations since the direct election of senators more than a century ago. And it’s poised to get worse — it’s not out of the question that after November, every state but Maine could have two senators from the same party. Americans don’t respect their work: According to one recent poll , the approval rating for Congress is 17 percent, compared to 77 percent who disapprove of its job performance. McConnell knows that better than most. In that same poll, just 6 percent approved of his performance, while 60 percent disapproved. He has served as party leader since 2007, the longest run in Senate history, and he literally built the modern Kentucky Republican Party that now dominates the state. Yet at home, McConnell isn’t exactly beloved or venerated for his long service. Here’s how his Republican colleague, Rand Paul, the state’s junior senator, described McConnell’s popularity in Kentucky in a nationally televised interview earlier this month. “His approval ratings in Kentucky are almost below zero . They are the lowest of any elected official in the United States,” Paul said dismissively. McConnell was first elected to the Senate in 1984, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. But Paul is among the class of senators elected in 2010 or later, which means they’ve never known the chamber under anything but partisan wartime conditions. For a majority of the Republican Conference, there is no frame of reference other than gridlock, bitter partisanship and party line votes. The Senate they know is no hallowed club of 100 engaged in high-minded debate. There is no reward, only pain, for compromise. It is a world of non-stop fundraising and social media attacks, accompanied by the constant threat of being primaried. The only Republican president they’ve ever served under despised McConnell, hounded several of their party colleagues out of office and abused a handful of them for sport. And that president, Donald Trump, might be back for another go-around next year. It’s frequently said that every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Never was that more true than today, which is among the reasons the job is so awful. McConnell leads a conference where six of its members have run for president before and a handful of others are thought to have similar aspirations. That level of pervasive personal ambition doesn’t make for a productive or team-oriented workplace. McConnell, who will step down from his leadership post in November, has said he plans to serve out the rest of his term through Jan. 2027. So at least his successor as the top Senate Republican will have someone to lean on for counsel, and to commiserate with. But the next GOP leader will not have access to the dealmaking skills of retiring Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of the last voices for moderation and compromise. Yet even though he will be gone, Manchin may have already provided the best piece of advice to those considering a bid for McConnell’s job. As a frustrated Manchin contemplated retiring in 2018 before running for and winning one final term, he reportedly told colleagues , “This place sucks.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s authors at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie .   SUBSCRIBE TO GLOBAL PLAYBOOK: Don’t miss out on POLITICO’s Global Playbook, the newsletter taking you inside pivotal discussions at the most influential gatherings in the world, including WEF in Davos, Milken Global in Beverly Hills, to UNGA in NYC and many more. Suzanne Lynch delivers the world's elite and influential moments directly to you. Stay in the global loop. SUBSCRIBE NOW.   WHAT'D I MISS? — Alabama House passes bill to protect IVF: Alabama’s GOP-controlled House voted today to give doctors who provide in-vitro fertilization civil and criminal immunity for any death or damage to embryos . The chamber’s vote comes nearly two weeks after the state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, igniting a national debate over how IVF is performed in the U.S. and putting pressure on Republicans grappling with how to convey their views on abortion ahead of the 2024 election. — Judge blocks Texas law that gives police broad powers to arrest migrants who illegally enter US: A federal judge today blocked a new Texas law that gives police broad powers to arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the U.S., dealing a victory to the Biden administration in its feud with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott over immigration enforcement. The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge David Ezra pauses a law that was set to take effect March 5 and came as President Joe Biden and his likely Republican challenger in November, Donald Trump, were visiting Texas’ southern border to discuss immigration. Texas officials are expected to appeal. — House sends two-step government funding punt to Senate on shutdown eve: The House passed a stopgap bill this afternoon that kicks Congress’ two government shutdown deadlines further into March , as top lawmakers work to pass final versions of half of the dozen annual funding measures next week. Now the spending patch awaits action in the Senate, where leaders are hoping to lock in unanimous agreement to fast-track final passage as early as this evening. Senate approval will head off a partial government shutdown that would begin after midnight Saturday if Congress doesn’t act, pegging the next funding deadlines as March 8 and March 22. NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 BORDER SPLITSCREEN — Joe Biden and Donald Trump held dueling visits to the nation’s southern border today , as immigration ascends to a top concern for Americans and the president seeks to dull his leading 2024 opponent’s political cudgel, POLITICO reports. While Biden, donning a baseball cap, stood on a gravel road as he was briefed by Border Patrol agents, law enforcement and local leaders in Brownsville, Texas, Trump was stationed over 300 miles away in Eagle Pass, Texas, the site of the state-federal standoff over border security. Trump — whose plans were announced before the White House trip — will also sit for an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity during his drop-in. The competing appearances set the opening scene for the general election, as both candidates ramp up their attacks and set their sights on the November rematch. And the venue of the showdown is no accident, as Biden and Trump seize on what’s likely to be a top issue in the 2024 race — the president emphasizing his recent efforts to solve the problem and blaming Trump for getting in the way, and his predecessor and likely challenger stoking fears and blaming Democrats. ‘WHOLE BALLOT’ QUESTION — Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib urged Michigan voters to look at the “whole ballot” in November rather than stay home in protest of President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war while declining to say if she would back the president in the general election, POLITICO reports. “Don’t stay home,” she said when asked whether voters who cast “uncommitted” protest ballots should sit out the November elections. “One thing that I know about staying home is you’re making us more invisible. I want you to exercise your right to vote, I really mean this. But also think of the whole ballot.” Asked if she’d be voting for Biden in November, Tlaib did not respond. She did not endorse Biden in 2020, though she campaigned against Donald Trump. IN A TAILSPIN — The ousted former leader of the Michigan Republican Party lost a key court ruling today in her effort to regain the top post, The Associated Press reports. The Michigan Court of Appeals said it won’t suspend a lower court’s order affirming Kristina Karamo’s removal by party members. Karamo was hoping that a stay would clear the way for her to lead a meeting Saturday in Detroit to select presidential delegates for the party’s national convention. AROUND THE WORLD Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on Feb. 22, 2024. | Fatima Shbair/AP WALKING BACK — President Joe Biden walked back his assessment that a hostage deal to pause fighting in the Gaza Strip could be reached by Monday , POLITICO reports. “I was on the telephone with the people in the region,” Biden told reporters on the South Lawn this morning, adding: “Probably not by Monday, but I’m hopeful.” The president said earlier this week he hoped a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas could be in place in roughly a week at an ice cream shop in New York as part of an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers. “We’re close, we’re not done yet,” Biden said. U.S. representatives, including several from the CIA, have worked with Israeli and Qatar officials in Doha in recent days to try and reach a cease-fire and hostage deal by Monday, but that effort is unlikely to come to a close this weekend, said a person with knowledge of negotiations granted anonymity to describe sensitive conversations. The U.S. and Israel are still waiting to hear back from Hamas on whether it will agree to a six-week pause in fighting and a new proposal for a prisoners-for-hostages exchange, that person said. Biden’s reassessment comes as he faces mounting pressure on the campaign trail to demonstrate to voters that he’s pushing the Israeli government to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza while also maintaining support for Israel, Washington’s staunchest ally in the Middle East. He has pushed harder for a pause in the fighting in recent weeks to enable more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza and to allow for the release of Israeli hostages. GRIM MILESTONE — More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 70,000 wounded in the Gaza Strip since Israel’s war on Hamas began nearly five months ago , health officials in the territory said today. The bloody milestone came as Palestinian witnesses say Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of people scrambling for aid in Gaza City. More than 100 people were killed and at least 700 wounded, according to Palestinian witnesses and Gaza’s Health Ministry, reports The Associated Press. Israel said many of the dead were trampled in a chaotic stampede for the food aid and that its troops only fired when they felt endangered by the crowd.   YOUR GUIDE TO EMPIRE STATE POLITICS: From the newsroom that doesn’t sleep, POLITICO's New York Playbook is the ultimate guide for power players navigating the intricate landscape of Empire State politics. Stay ahead of the curve with the latest and most important stories from Albany, New York City and around the state, with in-depth, original reporting to stay ahead of policy trends and political developments. Subscribe now to keep up with the daily hustle and bustle of NY politics.   NIGHTLY NUMBER Up to 10 feet The amount of snow headed for the mountains around Lake Tahoe by the weekend, weather forecasters say. Widespread blowing snow with winds gusting up to 100 mph (160 kph) over Sierra ridgetops will create blizzard conditions with white-out conditions and near-zero visibility. RADAR SWEEP ‘VIRGIN BIRTHS’ — A crazy thing is happening to some female animals in captivity that seems to defy the laws of nature — they’re getting pregnant without coming into contact with males . Earlier this month, a stingray in an aquarium in North Carolina got pregnant without encountering a male for more than eight years. Scientists believe this could be due to a phenomenon known as parthenogenesis, which results in an egg developing into an embryo without being fertilized. It can happen to insects, including mayflies, fairly regularly, but it’s much more rare among vertebrates. So what should we make of the stingray pregnancy and ones like it? Frankie Adkins reports for the BBC. PARTING IMAGE On this date in 1960: President Dwight D. Eisenhower waves to the crowd from car as his motorcade passes a banner welcoming him in English and Spanish in Santiago, Chile. | AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Mia McCarthy @Reporter_Mia   FOLLOW US

POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA

 

A small drone flies into a damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor for the first time to study melted fuel

MARI YAMAGUCHI

Updated Wed, February 28, 2024 

TOKYO (AP) — A drone small enough to fit in one's hand flew inside one of the damaged reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Wednesday in hopes it can examine some of the molten fuel debris in areas where earlier robots failed to reach.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings also began releasing the fourth batch of the plant’s treated and diluted radioactive wastewater into the sea Wednesday. The government and TEPCO, the plant's operator, say the water is safe and the process is being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but the discharges have faced strong opposition by fishing groups and a Chinese ban on Japanese seafood.

A magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in March 2011 destroyed the plant's power supply and cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt down. The government and TEPCO plan to remove the massive amount of fatally radioactive melted nuclear fuel that remains inside each reactor — a daunting decommissioning process that's been delayed for years and mired by technical hurdles and a lack of data.

To help on data, a fleet of four drones were set to fly one at a time into the hardest-hit No. 1 reactor’s primary containment vessel. TEPCO plans to probe a new area Thursday.

TEPCO has sent a number of probes — including a crawling robot and an underwater vehicle — inside each reactor but was hindered by debris, high radiation and the inability to navigate through the rubble, though they were able to gather some data. In 2015, the first robot to go inside got stuck on a grate.

Wednesday’s drone flight comes after months of preparations that began in July at a nearby mock facility.

The drones, each weighing 185 grams (6.5 ounces), are highly maneuverable and their blades hardly stir up dust, making them a popular model for factory safety checks. Each carries a front-loaded high-definition camera to send live video and higher-quality images to an operating room.

In part due to battery life, the drone investigation inside a reactor is limited to a 5-minute flight.

TEPCO officials said they plan to use the new data to develop technology for future probes as well as a process to remove the melted fuel from the reactor. The data will also be used in the investigation of how the 2011 meltdown occurred.

On Wednesday, two drones inspected the area around the exterior of the main structural support in the vessel, called the pedestal. Based on the images they transmitted, TEPCO officials decided to send the other two in Thursday.

The pedestal is directly under the reactor’s core. Officials hope to film the core’s bottom to find out how overheated fuel dripped there in 2011.

About 880 tons of highly radioactive melted nuclear fuel remain inside the three damaged reactors. Critics say the 30- to 40-year cleanup target set by the government and TEPCO is overly optimistic. The damage in each reactor is different, and plans need to accommodate their conditions.

TEPCO's goal is to remove a small amount of melted debris from the least-damaged No. 2 reactor as a test case by the end of March by using a giant robotic arm. It was forced to delay due to difficulty removing a deposit blocking its entry.

As in the past three rounds of wastewater discharges which started in August, TEPCO plans to release 7,800 metric tons of the treated water through mid-March after diluting it with massive amounts of seawater and sampling it to make sure radioactivity is far below international standards.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Wednesday accused Japan of risking the whole world with “nuclear-contaminated water” and demanded it stop “this wrongdoing.” Mao urged Japan to cooperate in an independent monitoring system with neighboring countries and other stakeholders.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-small-drone-flies-into-a-damaged-fukushima-nuclear-reactor-for-the-first-time-to-study-melted-fuel/ar-BB1j1dpr

 

E. Jean Carroll expresses ‘very serious concerns’ Trump won’t pay $83M judgment

BY ZACH SCHONFELD AND ELLA LEE - 02/29/24

Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll expressed “very serious concerns” Thursday that she won’t be able to collect the $83 million from former President Trump that a jury awarded in Carroll’s defamation lawsuit last month, citing Trump’s various legal woes. 

“He simply asks the Court to ‘trust me’ and offers, in a case with an $83.3 million judgment against him, the court filing equivalent of a paper napkin; signed by the least trustworthy of borrowers,” Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, wrote in court papers. 

The new filing responds to Trump’s demand that his trial judge delay enforcing the eight-figure sum as the former president attempts to get the verdict reduced or eliminated entirely in post-trial motions. In the alternative, Trump asked the judge to allow him to post bond in a “substantially reduced amount.” 

Opposing those demands, Carroll pointed to the more than $454 million judgment in Trump’s civil fraud case, which only grows in interest each day it’s left unpaid.  

“To begin, recent developments give rise to very serious concerns about Trump’s cash position and the feasibility (and ease) of collecting on the judgment in this case,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote. 

Trump on Wednesday offered to post a $100 million bond in the fraud case while he appeals, writing in court filings that the eye-popping judgment made it “impossible” to secure a bond in the full amount. 

Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, right, leaves federal court with her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Thursday, April 27, 2023, in New York. Donald Trump’s lawyer sought Thursday to pick apart a decades-old rape claim against the former president, questioning why accuser E. Jean Carroll did not scream or seek help when Trump allegedly attacked her in a department store.(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

A New York judge in the trial court’s appellate division ruled that enforcement of the multimillion-dollar judgment would not be paused unless Trump could post a complete bond but did pause the enforcement of two penalties regarding the former president’s ability to seek loans and serve in top leadership positions of his and other New York companies.  

If Trump posts the full judgment, the financial penalties will be immediately paused. If he doesn’t, under the Wednesday ruling, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) can begin to collect the full amount — a process that could mean selling famed properties or other assets.  

A federal jury in New York awarded Carroll the $83.3 million after Trump was ruled to have defamed the advice columnist by denying her sexual assault claims in 2019, when Carroll came forward publicly. 

Trump has insisted that Carroll made up the story to sell her book. A separate jury last year found Trump liable for sexual abuse. 

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4498034-e-jean-carroll-trump-83m-judgment/