Trump scores unexpected win as fine reduced by $289m
WASHINGTON, DC – Donald Trump has done it again. On what appeared to be his day of reckoning in New York, his legal team pulled another rabbit out of yet another hat.
A Court of Appeals handed the former president a substantial and unexpected legal victory, reducing by $289m the size of the bond he must post to guarantee payment of the massive fine he faces for committing civil fraud. Trump also walked away with an extended deadline to come up with the guarantee.
When Monday dawned, Trump faced the prospect of either paying the authorities in New York $454m in full to settle the judgement laid against him in his civil fraud trial, or lodge a bond guaranteeing payment of the full amount in the event that his appeal against the ruling failed.
It had been exactly one month since Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump and his sons to pay the unprecedented fine as restitution for overinflating the value of their corporate assets in a successful effort to attract loans from financial institutions on favourable terms. For once, it seemed, Trump was out of time.
Last week, his lawyers told the court that despite his “ongoing diligent efforts”, the former President had failed to find any single company willing to furnish him with a bond of sufficient magnitude. Trump attorneys called the challenge “a practical impossibility”.
As for simply settling the fine, his lawyers claimed Trump did not have $454m immediately available to pay the penalty. But Trump – eager to protect the notion that he’s both wealthy and successful – claimed on Friday that he has “ALMOST FIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS IN CASH, A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT WHICH I INTEND TO USE IN MY CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT”. He suggested, without evidence and again in capital letters, that Engoron “KNEW THIS, WANTED TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME, AND THAT’S WHERE AND WHY HE CAME UP WITH THE SHOCKING NUMBER”.
But the day then took an entirely unpredicted twist, with a five judge panel in the Appeals Court riding partially to the former president’s rescue. The judges ruled that they would reduce the immediate financial burden on Trump, by requiring him to post a bond for $175m, and pause the ability of the New York Attorney General Letitia James to seize Trump’s assets for the next 10 days.
The outcome is a big victory for Trump, who may well be able to source a financial guarantee that is only around one-third of the burden he was previously facing. Reacting to the news, he said, “I greatly respect the decision of the appellate court”, and pledged to secure the reduced guarantee “very quickly, within the next 10 days”.
The ruling is a massive blow to James, who was already poised to start separating the former president from his assets.
She had made it abundantly clear that she was ready to act, repeatedly suggesting that she was willing to seize 40 Wall Street – the landmark office building in Lower Manhattan that remains his most valuable single property holding. “I can see it from my office window,” she said in a social media post last November, and in several interviews since she has indicated the office block is firmly in her sights.
“If he does not have funds to pay off the judgement,” James told ABC News last month, “then we will seek judgement enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets.”
James had already started work. Last week, court records show that the authorities in Westchester County, in New York’s opulent Hudson Valley, were officially informed of the judgement against Trump. That procedural move could presage eventual efforts to seize the former president’s properties there, including the Trump National Golf Course.
There were also suggestions that she would move rapidly to freeze some of Trump’s personal and corporate bank accounts, and use any money still in them to pay down his debt. She may also be able to target some of his highly prized personal possessions, including – potentially – the jet he refers to as “Trump Force One”.
All that is now frozen in aspic. Trump not only has ten more days to raise the bond to satisfy the Appeals Court ruling. He also has another week and a half to arrange his assets to his best legal advantage, lest he fails to come up with the financial guarantee.
Trump learned the news while he attended court in New York on an entirely different matter. He travelled to Manhattan to ask a judge to dismiss criminal proceedings against him regarding the payments he made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, allegedly in an effort to silence her about their affair ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump denies the affair, and accuses Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of suppressing documents that the former president claims could have helped him.
The Daniels case, while the judge refused any delay and confirmed it will begin next month, will recede into the background in light of the Appeals Court reprieve in the fraud case.
Early on Monday, on his “Truth Social” platform, he took fresh aim at the threat by James and Engoron to seize his assets in the civil fraud case, branding the process “ELECTION INTERFERENCE” and accusing his tormentors of being “Radical Left Lunatics and Communists”.
Unexpectedly, the Appeals Court has provided him with fresh ammunition, and the ruling will rekindle the hopes of Trump insiders that upon appeal, the size of the New York judgement against him may – like the bond – be substantially reduced.
