Donald Trump’s continuing attempts to squirm out of paying writer E.Jean Carroll the $5 million plus interest he owes her, despite failing to get the Supreme Court to bail him out, has set off a war at the law firm representing him in the case.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, partners at high-profile law firm Sullivan & Cromwell were told they “would stay out of Trump’s effort to overturn two jury verdicts that writer E. Jean Carroll won against him, finding that he sexually abused and defamed her, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Sullivan & Cromwell’s co-chairman Robert Giuffra assured the firm’s partners that they would maintain distance from Trump’s crusade to overturn two jury verdicts in Carroll’s favor. The firm drew a “red line.” Then it erased it.
In recent weeks, Sullivan & Cromwell has inserted itself directly into one of the Carroll cases, deepening the firm’s entanglement with Trump while creating a civil war over how far the firm will go to keep the president’s business.
Noting that a federal jury awarded Carroll $5 million in 2023 in the sex-abuse case, Carroll “won again at trial in a separate case against Trump, with a jury ordering Trump to pay her more than $83 million for defamatory comments he made about Carroll in his first term in office.” The Journal reported that, “The decision last year to take on Trump as a client was made by the firm’s executive committee instead of Sullivan & Cromwell’s larger committee of managing partners, which typically has final say over controversial representations, said people familiar with the firm’s internal workings.”
Adding to the unusual aspect of taking on the controversial Trump as a client, the report states, “The executive committee didn’t consult the managing partners committee about the firm’s assistance in the Carroll matter, and the firm previously issued a denial to media about its involvement in the case,” according to insiders.
“The Carroll cases were of particular concern for some lawyers because of the nature of Carroll’s allegations—that Trump sexually assaulted her during a chance meeting at a department store in the 1990s—and because big law firms rarely take on such cases for fear of reputational damage, people familiar with the firm said,” according to the Journal’s C. Ryan Barber, Joe Palazzolo and Josh Dawsey,” adding, “Some lawyers at the firm also took the position that Sullivan & Cromwell shouldn’t be the one-stop shop for Trump’s highest-profile personal legal matters.”
According to the report, since last year, Giuffra has “sought to persuade partners at Sullivan & Cromwell that the work for Trump would be limited but beneficial.”