Alina Habba whines about judge’s 'mentorship' of E. Jean Carroll's lawyer 30 years ago

Alina Habba is again attempting to discredit the judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s disastrous $83 million civil trial, this time claiming his mentorship of E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer is suspicious.

Habba filed Monday a three-page letter decrying Judge Lewis Kaplan’s reported mentorship of Roberta Kaplan, who spearheaded the groundbreaking defamation case against Trump, who denies wrongdoing but was found liable last year for sexually abusing Carroll in the early 1990s.

“The Court was overtly hostile towards defense counsel and President Trump, and displayed preferential treatment towards Plaintiff’s counsel,” Habba writes.

“We are unable to flesh out our position concerning what specific relief should be requested, including, but not limited to, moving for new trials on the issues of liability and damages.”

Habba’s complaint rests on a New York Post report that relies on an anonymous source and quotes Trump’s much-maligned attorney in the headline.

The anonymous source claimed Judge Kaplan and Roberta Kaplan were close colleagues at the high-power law firm Paul, Weiss Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison in the early 1990s. Judge Kaplan was appointed to the bench in 1994. Roberta Kaplan joined the law firm in 1992, according to her biography.

“Lew was like her mentor,” the former partner told the Post.

Habba is quoted as responding, “It’s insane and so incestuous.”

Habba claims Judge Kaplan took an ethical misstep when he failed to disclose the reported working relationship with Carrol’s attorney.

She bolds her quotation from the Code of Conduct for United States Judges that demands they recuse themselves should “a lawyer with whom the judge previously practiced law served during such association as a lawyer concerning the matter.”

While Habba seems to suggest this means Judge Kaplan’s relationship with Carroll’s lawyer violated Canon 3, another attorney who reviewed the law, and shared the filing on X, disagreed.

“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,” wrote Andrew Fleischman, a Georgia attorney and defamation expert.

“Alina Habba is such a bad lawyer she forgot not to italicize and bold the part of the law that wrecks her argument.”