NEW YORK (AP) — The federal judge who presided over the jury trial that resulted in an $83 million award to writer E. Jean Carroll for her defamation claims against former President Donald Trump said Wednesday that his rejection of his lawyer’s unusual midtrial mistrial request was not a close call. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued a written opinion to explain his swift denial of attorney Alina Habba’s mistrial request, which she made in front of a Manhattan jury as Carroll testified about her instinct to immediately delete death threats she received in emails after the public first heard of her rape claims against Trump. Habba said a mistrial was in order because Carroll, 80, was confessing that she destroyed evidence that should have been preserved for trial. Generally, lawyers make mistrial requests out of the presence of a jury. “The motion made no sense,” Kaplan wrote, explaining that Habba had known for more than a year that Carroll had said that she deleted some emails making death threats against her and yet waited until …