New York AG asks court to reject Trump's $175M bond for civil judgment
Lawyers for the New York Attorney General asked Judge Arthur Engoron on Friday to reject former President Donald Trump's $175 million bond for his civil judgment and require him to post a new one within seven days.
Letitia James contended that the former president failed to demonstrate that Knight Specialty Insurance Company, the company behind his bond, had the resources to pay the bond if Trump's appeal failed.
"Defendants and KSIC have failed to justify KSIC as the surety on this extraordinarily large undertaking for a number of reasons," James said in the filing.
In February, Engoron determined that Trump and his co-defendants engaged in a decade-long scheme to inflate the former president's net worth to get better business deals and interest rates on loans.
Trump was at risk of having his properties seized after he failed to obtain a bond for the $464 million judgment, but a New York Appellate Court reduced the amount of money Trump would need to post to $175 million.
Trump and his co-defendants posted a $175 million bond on April 1.
The attorney general's filing stated that Trump and the company failed to demonstrate the collateral of the bond beyond $175 million in cash in a Charles Schwab brokerage account. In the motion, James also raised concerns that KSIC uses affiliates in the Cayman Islands to reduce the liabilities shown on their books and allegedly violates federal laws.
"(KSIC is) a small insurer that is not authorized to write business in New York and thus not regulated by the state’s insurance department, had never before written a surety bond in New York or in the prior two years in any other jurisdiction, and has a total policyholder surplus of just $138 million," James said in the filing.
Judge Engoron is scheduled to hold a hearing on this issue on Monday.
Don Hankey, the chairman of Knight Insurance Group, declined to comment on the matter.
