Alina Habba's Glaring Mistake in Filing Pointed Out by Attorney

A Georgia attorney has rejected Donald Trump's lawyer Alina Habba's claim that E. Jean Carroll's legal council received "preferential treatment" from the judge in the former president's second defamation case, claiming she "forgot not to italicize and bold the part of the law that wrecks her argument."

On Friday, a New York jury concluded Trump had defamed Carroll and ordered him to pay $83.3 million in damages. A previous civil case concluded Trump sexually abused Carroll in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s, then defamed her when she spoke out publicly. He was instructed to pay her $5 million.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and condemned the second verdict as "absolutely ridiculous."

On Monday, Habba wrote to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the second case, suggesting he gave "preferential treatment" to Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan (no relation), because the pair worked together in the 1990s. She said this would form part of the basis for Trump's appeal and could lead to "new trials" being needed in the case.

Specifically, Habba quoted a section of Canon 3 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which lays out the grounds where "a judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

The code says this includes cases where "the judge served as lawyer in the matter in controversy, or a lawyer with whom the judge previously practiced law served during such association as a lawyer concerning the matter, or the judge or such lawyer has been a material witness."

Newsweek reached out to Habba at around 7 a.m. ET by email. This piece will be updated if she decides to comment.

Habba placed everything in the sentence between "a lawyer" and "the matter" in bold and italics, but on X, formerly Twitter, Georgia attorney Andrew Fleischman said this actually undermines her argument as Judge Kaplan and Roberta Kaplan weren't working together when the case began.

Posting a screenshot of the relevant section, he wrote: "Alina Habba is such a bad lawyer she forgot not to italicize and bold the part of the law that wrecks her argument."

"Judge Kaplan would have a real conflict of interest if E. Jean Carroll was suing Donald Trump in 1992, and then the lawsuit languished for 32 years, and one of the original lawyers who filed that suit was still with the firm," Fleischman said in a subsequent post.

"Also, if you didn't object when you found out that the other attorney was the judge's former law clerk, you waived the issue."

On Saturday, The New York Post reported Judge Lewis Kaplan, aged 79, and 57-year-old Roberta Kaplan worked together at the same New York law firm during the 1990s.

The paper claimed an anonymous former partner of the firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, has said Lewis Kaplan was "like a mentor" to Roberta Kaplan during this time.

However, this was strongly disputed by a representative for Roberta Kaplan who said: "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."

In her letter to Judge Kaplan, Habba claimed she only became aware of this connection after reading the New York Post article, adding: "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 response, Habba said Trump's legal team could seek further action "including, but not limited to, moving for new trials on the issues of liability and damages."

During the case Judge Kaplan clashed repeatedly with Habba, who on Friday he threatened to jail, warning: "You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Now, sit down."