Emails Bare Behind-Scenes Fight in Trump Bid to Delay Carroll Trial for Mother-in-Law’s Funeral

Newly available emails offer a glimpse into the battle between the lawyers for Donald Trump and writer E. Jean Carroll after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied Trump a one-week adjournment in the defamation case to attend his mother-in-law's funeral.

The communications bare the civil, yet also irritable, stance of Carroll's lawyer, who slammed the former president for "continuing to defame" her client even as he faces trial for defamation damages on Tuesday, the day after the Iowa caucus.

The case beginning Tuesday is Trump's second to determine yet more damages for defaming the writer. A jury already awarded Carroll $5 millions in sexual abuse and defamation damages last year in an earlier suit against Trump.

Carroll sued Trump after he denied her accusation of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at a Manhattan department story in the 1990s — and then viciously derided the writer as a "wack job."

He again attacked her earlier this month in dozens of posts — several of them identical — on Truth Social, calling the case against him "fraudulent."

After Trump's legal team requested a delay in the current case, Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan replied to Trump lawyer Alina Habba that while the plaintiff's legal team was "very sorry" for Trump's loss, "Ms. Carroll and other witnesses are prepared to proceed as scheduled on Tuesday."

She added that any delay would be "severely prejudicial, particularly as your client is near certain to assert scheduling conflicts again, and continues to defame Ms. Carroll on a near-daily basis in connection with his campaign for president."

Kaplan noted that she would not oppose a continuance that would allow the court to adjourn early on Thursday. That would leave Friday free — since the case is not heard on Fridays — along with Monday, which is the Martin Luther King federal holiday.

But Kaplan said she would only support adjourning early Thursday "if the defense finishes with its witnesses by that time." She pointedly noted that Trump did not bother to attend the "prior trial which decided liability," and that this case would also be limited to liability.

Judge Lewis Kaplan sided with Carroll's attorneys in his ruling on the requested delay.

"The Court offers its condolences to Mr. and Mrs. Trump and the rest of ... the family ... Mr. Trump is free to attend the trial, the funeral, or all or parts of both, as he wishes," he wrote.

Trump then blasted Kaplan as a "bad person" on Truth Social.

Trump had previously attempted to delay the start of the trial until after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals revisited the question of presidential immunity in the case.