Trump’s Lawyers Told the Court That No One Would Give Him a Bond. Then He Got a Lifeline, but They Didn’t Tell the Judges.
Trump’s Lawyers Told the Court That No One Would Give Him a Bond. Then He Got a Lifeline, but They Didn’t Tell the Judges.
An appeals court reduced Trump’s bond by more than 60% after his attorneys claimed it was a “practical impossibility” to pay the full amount. Their failure to disclose a proposal from a billionaire financier may have violated ethics rules.
That failure may have violated ethics rules, legal experts say.
Throw it on the pile.
I feel like I’ve seen a million of these “oh he might have done this” and none of them have been a “gotcha” moment. Agreed throw it on the pile. This is going to be a god awful election year.
Notable that this is the lawyers being in trouble here for breaking ethics rules that they agreed to follow prior to beginning law school.
Another unexplored angle would be getting multiple, smaller bonds.
Oh, nobody will loan you $464 million? How about finding 4 lenders at $116 million? Can you do that?
Thats not how loans necessarily work though. If I go to a bank and ask for $100m, but they see I already owe $350m to other lenders, they'll say no, because they know they arent getting paid back until after the other 3. So if they think trump has $450m in assets, just give him whole amount, and if they don't think he has that much, any money theyre giving him is just being thrown away.
This is a guy notorious for lying about his assets and not paying debts. Even giving him $125m is a bad idea, but the odds of getting paid back get even worse if you arent first in line.
But this isn't a loan. Federating together a large bond is a normal practice in the court system with high value bonds. All of the big bonding agencies are willing and able to do that kind of piece & part together a bond to distribute the risk.
Now, whether even that kind of distributed risk would work is another story. You don't do anyone for this person unless he pays up front. His entire business strategy is to get someone else to do the work or front the resources for a venture, then fail to pay up followed by suing everyone to make it too painful to work with him. He just burns through business relationships because he's nothing more than a leech that kills hosts that are foolish enough to touch his business operations in any way shape or form.
edit:
That absolutely IS how it works and it has been done many times before, how the fuck is this upvoted so much? I misunderstood the actual premise of your reply.
He can syndicate the bond.
This is Ben Meiselas, who is a Kaepernick Partner, Geragos Global Partner, Aliu & Co. Partner, USC Law Lecturer: https://youtu.be/BiJRKrhp7B8?t=682
In fact, New York attorney general, Letitia James submitted what you and I predicted she would do this week after Donald Trump filed that brief last week saying it was impossible to be able to post a bond and that this is so unprecedented. New York attorney general, Letitia James filed a surreply Starting point is 00:13:40 which was accepted by the appellate division and she's showed numerous companies that are real companies with real assets in cases that have posted bonds the same size or slightly less or some that were larger. She talked about in her brief how, you know, one of the things you can do, you don't have to go to one surety, you can go to a syndicate of sureties who come together so that the risk is minimized and you have a tower of sureties. And she also said Donald Trump's brief provided not a scintilla of evidence of the steps he even went through in order to secure a surety bond. All Donald Trump's brief did was his lawyer said he just doesn't have the cash or the means to do it.
This is Michael Popok, who is a NY trial lawyer/strategist talking about how it can be broken up https://youtu.be/N8VnxKT6ezA?feature=shared&t=372
Judge Angoron issued an enhanced monitoring order giving the monitor, who is a former federal judge, Barbara Jones, enhanced superpowers over the corporation, over Donald Trump's business affairs, including the ability to both monitor all compliance and financial reporting and interactions with counterparties, interactions with bonding companies, insurity companies, that's already in place. And that has not been stayed by this order, meaning that Trump is gonna have to go through the monitor and report to the monitor about his interactions with bonding companies in order to raise the $175 million. But with Donald Trump bragging that he has $500 million cash in the bank, combined with the other assets we know he has in real estate and the ability to either get a irrevocable letter of credit from a bank ability to either get a irrevocable letter of credit from a bank or to syndicate the bond beyond just one bonding company, use two or three surety companies, each taking, let's say, a $50 or $75 million piece to total up to $175 million
YES he absolutely can by syndicating the bond. Letitia James said he could:
This is Ben Meiselas, who is a Kaepernick Partner, Geragos Global Partner, Aliu & Co. Partner, USC Law Lecturer: https://youtu.be/BiJRKrhp7B8?t=682
In fact, New York attorney general, Letitia James submitted what you and I predicted she would do this week after Donald Trump filed that brief last week saying it was impossible to be able to post a bond and that this is so unprecedented. New York attorney general, Letitia James filed a surreply Starting point is 00:13:40 which was accepted by the appellate division and she's showed numerous companies that are real companies with real assets in cases that have posted bonds the same size or slightly less or some that were larger. She talked about in her brief how, you know, one of the things you can do, you don't have to go to one surety, you can go to a syndicate of sureties who come together so that the risk is minimized and you have a tower of sureties. And she also said Donald Trump's brief provided not a scintilla of evidence of the steps he even went through in order to secure a surety bond. All Donald Trump's brief did was his lawyer said he just doesn't have the cash or the means to do it.
This is Michael Popok, who is a NY trial lawyer/strategist talking about how it can be broken up https://youtu.be/N8VnxKT6ezA?feature=shared&t=372
Judge Angoron issued an enhanced monitoring order giving the monitor, who is a former federal judge, Barbara Jones, enhanced superpowers over the corporation, over Donald Trump's business affairs, including the ability to both monitor all compliance and financial reporting and interactions with counterparties, interactions with bonding companies, insurity companies, that's already in place. And that has not been stayed by this order, meaning that Trump is gonna have to go through the monitor and report to the monitor about his interactions with bonding companies in order to raise the $175 million. But with Donald Trump bragging that he has $500 million cash in the bank, combined with the other assets we know he has in real estate and the ability to either get a irrevocable letter of credit from a bank ability to either get a irrevocable letter of credit from a bank or to syndicate the bond beyond just one bonding company, use two or three surety companies, each taking, let's say, a $50 or $75 million piece to total up to $175 million.
Why did they reduce the bond? Isn't the rule normally: you can't pay, you go to jail?
Don’t be silly, those rules are for the peasants.
No jail in civil trial, he should have had to pay the bond or have his assets forfeit after a short stay period. An appeal court with a Judge that Trump appointed reduced his bond because they're a fucking shill.
That has not been the rule. Debtor's prisons were abolished a long time ago.
Edit: For those unaware, this is about Trump's civil fraud trial, there is no bail or bond to get out of jail. There is no jail. He has the option to post a bond to stay execution of the civil judgment.
That's not what bail is.
The idea is: Someone is arrested. Their trial isn't for a while. If they don't stay in jail, how do you make sure they show up for trial? Take a bunch of money from them and give it back if they show up. The amount of money is kind of based on how much money you have and how likely they think you are to show up to trial.
Judges don't have to even set a bail. And not being able to put up bail, for most people, means awaiting trial while in jail.
After ProPublica reached out to Trump’s representatives, Hankey called back and revised his account. He said he had heard “indirectly” about ProPublica’s subsequent inquiries to Trump’s lawyers. In the second conversation, he said that accepting the real estate as collateral would have been complicated and that he wouldn’t have been able to “commit” to providing a bond in the full amount “until I evaluate the assets.”
Don Hankey is such a great cartoon character name.
Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo! Is that you?