In order to delay paying the greater monetary damages award in his civil fraud case, the former president Trump obtained a $175 million bail, which the attorney general’s office of New York has requested be nullified.
The former president and his co-defendants, the Trump Organization and its senior executives, including his two eldest sons, failed to show that the surety Trump used to get the bond actually has the funds to back it, according to state attorneys’ court documents on Friday.
They claim that the defendants failed to provide evidence that the bond is backed by “sufficiently secure and ascertainable” collateral.
Attorney General Letitia James’s (D) office in New York wrote a 26-page filing saying, “Based on the foregoing, the People respectfully request that the Court deny Movants’ motion to justify the surety, declare the Bond to be without effect and order that any replacement bond be posted within seven days, along with such other and further relief the Court deems necessary and appropriate.”
Knight Specialty Insurance Company, situated in California, provided security for Trump’s bond.
Knight, according to state attorneys, is a “small insurer that is not authorized to write business in New York” and had “never before written a surety bond in New York” prior to Trump.
According to the document, the company’s overall policyholder surplus is just $138 million. Companies like Knight are prohibited under New York state law from taking on obligations, such as bonds, or from risking losing more than ten percent of their excess.
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Additionally, the state said that Trump and his codefendants “failed to meet their burden to demonstrate that the Bond is’sufficiently collateralized by identifiable assets,'” because he still has access to the $175 million in cash that he put in an account as collateral.
This year, Judge Arthur Engoron declared that there was a conspiracy by Trump, the Trump Organization, and high-ranking personnel to falsify Trump’s net worth in order to receive tax and insurance benefits. He mandated that they pay $464 million in total, plus interest.
With Trump’s bond, other penalties are halted and James’s office is prevented from collecting the multimillion-dollar judgment against the defendants while they file an appeal.
Originally set at the full judgment amount, the bail sum was lowered by an appeals panel after Trump’s attorneys claimed it would be “impossible” for the former president to obtain a full bond.
The attorney general’s office has brought up some problems, and the judge is scheduled to hear arguments on Monday. The hearing is scheduled to take place concurrently with Trump’s criminal trial in New York and his opening remarks.
