Alina Habba scrambles after E. Jean Carroll's attorney calls for sanctions

Alina Habba, an attorney for Donald Trump, seemed to backpedal on Tuesday after suggesting District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan had not disclosed a conflict of interest.

In a letter on Monday, Habba pointed to a New York Post report claiming Kaplan was the mentor of E. Jean Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan.

The attorney responded by calling for possible sanctions against Habba for the "utterly baseless" claims.

Habba sent a letter to the judge within hours of the threat of sanctions.

"In her letter, Ms. Kaplan mischaracterizes the substance of a letter recently submitted on behalf of President Trump, ... and makes inflammatory and unwarranted accusations," Habba wrote. "Contrary to Ms. Kaplan's contention, there are no 'false allegations of a 'mentor-mentee relationship between Your Honor and [Ms. Kaplan]'' contained in my January 29 letter."

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"To be clear, this claim originated solely from the New York Post, where it was purportedly sourced from a 'former Paul Weiss partner who asked not to be named,'" the letter continued. "I played no part in uncovering this information; have never communicated with the unnamed Paul Weiss partner; and have no personal knowledge as to whether the information contained in the article is true or false."

Habba insisted that the "point" of her Monday letter "was to verify whether the information contained in the New York Post article is accurate."

"Since Ms. Kaplan has now denied that there was ever a mentor-mentee relationship between herself and Your Honor, this issue has seemingly been resolved," she concluded.