New York Attorney General Letitia James is taking unprecedented action to void Donald Trump’s $175 million bond so that she can begin seizing the former president’s assets.
State lawyers claim in court filings submitted on Friday that the former president and his co-defendants — the Trump Organization and his two oldest sons — failed to prove that the surety Trump invoked to obtain the bond actually has the money to back it.
The state then argued that the defendants did not show that “sufficiently secure and ascertainable” collateral backs the bond.
“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,” lawyers with James’s office wrote in a 26-page filing.
The Knight Specialty Insurance Company in California backed Trump’s bond.
State lawyers said Knight was a “small insurer that is not authorized to write business in New York” and that, up until Trump, Knight had “never before written a surety bond in New York.”
The report shows that the company only has a policyholder surplus of $138 million. Companies like Knight can’t take on debts or risks that could cause them to lose more than 10% of their assets, according to New York state law.
“Based on KSIC’s policyholder surplus in its most recent annual financial statement of $138,441,671, the limitation of loss on any one risk that KSIC is permitted to write is $13.8 million,” the lawyers wrote. “The face amount of the bond exceeds this limitation by $161.2 million.”
New York state also claimed that Trump and his co-defendants “failed to meet their burden to demonstrate that the Bond is ‘sufficiently collateralized by identifiable assets.’” This is because Trump still has access to the $175 million in cash he put in an account as collateral.
Earlier this year, Judge Arthur Engoron said that Trump, the Trump Organization, and top officials ‘conspired’ together to change Trump’s net worth so that they could get tax and insurance breaks. They were ordered to pay a total of $464 million plus interest.
However, the accounting practices utilized by Trump and his businesses are nearly universal in the real estate market. New York has never brought a case against a single defendant for this practice, whereas the state cannot prove that anyone was harmed. Donald Trump’s creditors at Deutsche Bank were fully paid back and made no formal complaints about his business practices. The Trump legal team has claimed there are ‘no victims’ in the case.
The partisan attorney general ran for office on getting revenge against Donald Trump before weaponizing the New York legal system to lead a political persecution campaign against him.
James is a political activist dressed up as an AG. She campaigned on political persecution, and she is delivering on that campaign promise.pic.twitter.com/HUSgnNba6r
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) October 5, 2023
