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A New York appeals court has reduced the size of the bond payable by Donald Trump to delay enforcement of a $464mn fraud judgment against him and his businesses to just $175mn, in a win for the former US president who had claimed it would be “impossible” to obtain the full amount.
The ruling came as a 30-day grace period granted to Trump by the New York attorney-general, who brought the fraud case, was set to expire, paving the way for Letitia James’ office to seize Trump’s cash and properties across the US.
In an order on Monday morning, the appeals court gave Trump 10 days to find the new sum. It also agreed to delay the enforcement of non-monetary penalties imposed as part of the judgment, such as the barring of Donald Trump and his elder sons from running a business in New York and applying for loans in the state.
The order provides a significant reprieve for Trump, who had been scrambling to secure the cash for a bond, after several insurance companies refused to accept his real estate holdings as collateral.
Last week, Trump’s lawyers said the former US president’s team had spent “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world”, and had concluded that “very few bonding companies will consider a bond of anything approaching that magnitude”.
In response, the attorney-general’s office suggested that Trump could instead secure a series of smaller bonds that would cumulatively cover the judgment, and disputed the fact that the sum was the largest ever in a New York state court, pointing to a handful of penalties above $1bn.
Trump was in court across the road from the appeals court when the order was published on Monday, attending a hearing at which it will be decided whether his criminal “hush money” trial will be further delayed.
Before arriving in court on Monday, Trump continued to rail against the fraud judgment on social media, writing that he was being forced to sell his “babies” because a “CORRUPT NEW YORK JUDGE & A.G. SET A FAKE AND RIDICULOUS NUMBER.
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