Donald Trump was supposed to have to post a $464 million bond by Monday or else the state of New York could begin collecting on the massive civil fraud judgment leveled against him earlier this year. An appeals court bailed him out, blocking collection of the judgment and giving the former president 10 days to post a drastically reduced $175 million bond.
The order is a huge win for Trump, whose assets were going to be subject to seizure if he couldn’t post nearly half-a-billion dollars by Monday. His lawyers said last week he wasn’t going to be able to come up with the money after 30 underwriters rejected him. The New York Times has reported that Trump is expected to be able to scrounge the new, reduced $175 million bond
That’s bullshit. Just more laws that don’t apply to this traitor.
Trump undervalued his properties to the IRS and overvalued them to investors. And now the courts are allowing him to undervalue them so he doesn’t have to face the consequences of his fraud.
I remember, many years ago before the first time he ran, I read he and his buddy lawyer giuliany were neck deep in shit and Stormy also had a solid case. I was like “that’s it. now he goes to jail.” but lo and behold, here we are and he’s free and running again.
Maybe it’s true what people say: Flying is like falling and missing the ground. (I think it’s based on something Douglas Adams wrote.)
Was that when he was referenced something like “Co-Conspirator #1 who went on to lead a successful campaign to become president of the United States”?
I remember that too and thinking “oh shit, he’s fucked now!” But nope. Our political system is so broken that he really is above the law and consequences. Not sure why we went through with the whole American Revolution thing just to end up in a place where there are figurative kings held to a different standard than the rest of us peasants.
We really need a law that says when you tell the IRS what your property is worth they are allowed to buy it at that price; if they later find out you represented it at a higher value to others.
Eh. This was a pretty political trial. “Over valued his holdings” oh probably a little, but value of real estate isn’t fixed. The bank reps would have to be completely incompetent or maybe they agreed with the valuations.
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME
The legal system is doing EVERYTHING it can to delay literally everything for this man, just so that election time will creep closer and closer and they can just say, “oh it’s too close to election time and we can’t just cancel a Presidential candidate in the midst of all this”.
These exceptions will never be given to any normal citizen of the US, but when it’s this rich orange idiot, every rule in existence will bend.
May Trump and his VP pick both have fatal heart attacks late September/early October
Tomorrow would also work. Or today.
I aim for Late September so the GoP are in a panic trying to replace him so late in the election season and eat themselves alive
Yep, trump is not the only person on trial here. You can’t set a precedent that actually punishes financial fraud to the point where you can’t actually profit from it when you’re eventually caught.
Trump isn’t the only real estate tycoon in NYC who has been fraudulently inflating the value of their assets. It would be uncomfortable for the judges to have to make a similar decision in the future to campaign donors.
Tbf the law works both ways. They cannot drop the charges to give him favor in the elections either. After the elections however, if he’s the president…
I actually thought something like this was going to happen, since it has happened before, per another comment I read earlier.
Some corporations were told to post billions in appeals bonds, and in the end they were reduced to a fraction of it.
So, while disappointing, I wasn’t completely surprised of this event.
I’m slightly less mad now that I know this has precedent. I’m still fucking furious that the only precedent I’ve heard about is corporations and Trump, since the law should be equally applied regardless of absolute amounts of money and I’m pretty sure that someone living in poverty isn’t going to get the same treatment for a $50k (or whatever is a proportional amount) judgement against them.
FUCKING SHIT. I SWEAR TO FUCK. CANT HE BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FUCKING EVER!?!? JUST THE CLASSIFIED FUCKING DOCUMENTS SITUATION SHOULD OF HAD HIS ASS IN JAIL LIKE DISCORD BRO. FUCK.
You had to have seen it coming.
What was going to happen, he fails to post bond like any other schmuck and goes to jail?
That wasn’t what was at stake here. Trump was already found guilty, he wasn’t bonding out of pretrial detention he was having to post bond in order to appeal the ruling, which typically requires the person making the appeal to post a bind to make sure they don’t spend all their money fighting on appeal, just to lose the appeal and not have any money left to pay the original judgement.
So my expectation was that yes, he would have to follow the same court rules as everyone else and put up the bond in order to appeal. While I do think we should get rid of requiring pretrial detention bond, I don’t necessarily see an issue with requiring pre-appeal bond. I don’t know, you don’t want to create a situation where you’re means testing the right to appeal, but you don’t want people to indefinitely delay enforcement of judgement against them or to allow them to spend away their ability to pay the judgement on appeals. Maybe forcing either the entirety of the judgement to be paid into a more traditional escrow account, or a payment plan for the judgement to be accepted and that paid into escrow, before an appeal can be started?
Any way you cut it though, I can’t fault this chuckle fuck for playing the court game but I’m fucking incensed the court is enabling it.
Thanks for explaining more about the shitty us “justice” system
The entire country is captured. Trumps reelection is almost guaranteed at this point.
Shut up, propagandist. Go back to reddit.
Hush urself lil lima bean we all know u work for big bean. Go back to Lima.
Lol
This sucks, but a few points are at least worth mentioning:
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Of the five judges listed on the order, annoyingly slim as it is, three are Democrats and two are “nonpartisan” but with resumes in the public sector and public interest law.
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Most states actually have a cap on appeal bonds, often around $50 million or less. NY doesn’t have one, but all the same thinking, for good or for ill, that would lead to a statutory limit might influence the appeals court here. Among them is precluding additional litigation from forcing a fire sale.
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In an appeal like this, the court has to at least conceptually imagine that there’s some possibility of success, and that with a defendant who is leveraged AF and not nearly as liquid as he boasts, there is only one bite at the apple when seizing and selling the assets to satisfy the judgment. If the court is convinced that this amount, well into nine figures, will occupy the vast majority of his liquid assets and insure some plausible compensation for the plaintiff, and the other assets aren’t going anywhere, then it’s not insane to demand a bond more in line with the available liquidity.
Trump is definitely getting the “rich business owner with lots of lawyers” treatment here, and that’s certainly something you could criticize about the American legal system, but I don’t think we’re seeing some completely inexplicable abuse of existing civil procedure. The orange turd still gets the due process that a President Turd would deny to so many others.
TL;DR: it’s possible the only thing the Appeals Court is saying is that ol’ Donny really can’t get the bigger bond and that Trump Tower will still be there to seize later.
I heartily disagree on these limits being to prevent a fire sale. They’re to protect the wealthy from a fire sale. You or I would be forced into a fire sale in a heartbeat for a million dollar judgement. And then into debtor’s prison when we turn out to be normal people who don’t have a million dollars of assets lying around.
And this is why I love Lemmy. Where else would you get a well reasoned explanation like this?
Five comments down, maybe, but I’ll take what we can get.
I can’t say I’m surprised by this, and while I hate Trump, it’s not for the cynical reason. It’s going to be quite the nightmare unwinding those transactions. My understanding is that NY doesn’t have a right of redemption after a Sheriff’s sale. While this is judicious, I would prefer Trump be given no quarter.
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Oh, okay, cool, so the justice system cares if you say it’s unfair and you can’t afford the judgment now? Because I’m pretty sure that’s news to most people.
We wouldn’t want to ruin his future. He has real potential!
Oh sorry, wrong case.
If they started auctioning off and selling his properties to make money, it would turn over a lot of really dark stones full of other people’s criminal activities.
He’s being protected by the club he’s in, not because they like him but because they would be in trouble if they didn’t.
That’s the basis of the system, mutually assurred corruption.
That’s why Epstein Epsteined himself
More over, the precedent set here is beneficial to other wealthy individuals.
Other wealthy individuals, even those who sit on the complete opposite side of Trump politically benefit from the appeals court’s judgement. It really is just corruption all over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkoKLXcZbu0
This is a great story by a great Canadian wanted to fight the corruption. He was supposed by it ultimately.
But you can see a lot of parallels today.
Wtf dude crime is no reason to do more crime
You only think that because you’re not a criminal.
And there goes every last shred of hope I had for America.
The country is fucking doomed, and it’ll drag the rest of the world into chaos with it. We’re all fucked.
We were fucked long before this clown showed up. If anything we should be grateful that he shine the light on it by being so obvious about it.
Time to start dragging billionaires into the streets.
Yes; no, well maybe partly; yes. Respectively
It hurts me that I wrote grateful… if I had considered my reply longer than I took to take a dump I wouldn’t have written it that way. My apologies
You’re smarter while taking a dump than most people are while voting for who represents them, as well as being much more willing to rethink things when questioned.
I understand what you meant, but I also think we shouldn’t be grateful to him for anything really.
Edited to add that I meant to begin by saying “apology accepted”.
Banks, mega corporations, (fake) rich people get bailed out — Republicans: Nothing.
Working-class doing public service get minor bailout with student loan forgiveness — Republicans: WHOA, NOW…
Do these judges have to explain their decision? Is there an opinion published somewhere? I’d love to understand what context brought them to this conclusion, I’ve never heard of someone gaining leniency because they couldn’t afford the fine.
There’s an old saying in Tennessee, I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”…
The published order is just that. It doesn’t explain the why or whatever just “We are reducing the bond amount and not removing the other limitations of the ruling”
“…because Project 2025”
It’s actually a pretty liberal court that made the ruling.
Neoliberal club. Fascist conservative club. It’s all the same fucking club, and you ain’t in it!
There’s an old saying in Tennessee, I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee
You know we’re fucked when I’m nostalgic for a time when Republicans were just dumb fucks trying to make their friends rich, rather than dumb fucks trying to destroy our democracy.
Isn’t the first one a prerequisite for the second one?
Works in the opposite order too.
I guess there’s a problem in that he needs the money in order to appeal.
Like everyone should have some right of appeal, and saying someone can’t appeal because they’re broke could be used to manipulate the justice system.
He still has to pay the whole amount if he loses the appeal.
The whole point of the bond is to prevent pointless appeals in the court (which I have to assume this will be) and, more importantly, serves as a guarantee the defendant will fulfill their obligations and pay at the end of an appeal failure, which … trump is absolutely a risk of not paying. And these judges have now effectively cast the guarantee aside.
Perhaps, but do you agree everyone should be able to appeal?
Sure, and frankly there is nothing preventing trump from appealing. However an appeal is not a green light to ignore or discard the lower court’s decision in the interim. Specifically outlined in the NY Court website
"Filing a Notice of Appeal does not stop or stay the winning side from taking steps to collect or enforce the judgment from the lower court. To put the collection on hold, you may have to ask the court for a stay. You may have to pay an amount of money equal to the judgment amount, called an undertaking, to the court while the appeal is being decided. "
And further to the point, I’d still like to understand what context he’s appealing under that was so compelling. This is a financial case, the facts and accounting figures supporting the judgement will presumably not change, leaving little room for a successful appeal.
Ultimately I’m of the opinion this is a frivolous appeal, and trump will not find the full amount owed at the end of it. By lowering the bond the appeals court has neutered the purpose of securing the bond in the first place, which can only to lead to more delays and difficulties collecting in the future.
Sigh. Evergreen:
I have lost all faith in our justice system.
“Justice system” is a misnomer. “Legal system” is more apt.
I have lost all faith in our
justicesystem.There was never reason to have faith in it to begin with.
It’s a justice system that began with maintaining the institution of chattel slavery and continues to maintain the institution of slavery through the prison system, and convicting black people more often and for longer sentences.
You still had any? Damn…
deleted by creator
Rules for thee but not me me!!
Damn. I was really hoping this would be a ray of light for the next year and a reduction in the level of election insanity we’re going to see.
Instead, just more fuel for the flames.
Violence would solve this problem.
It would, but it would also create lots of new problems. I would regain some hope for humanity, though, if the people finally woke up to the reality of their 350,000,000:1 ratio against their oppressors…
but it would also create lots of new problems.
Much bigger and even harder to solve problems.
Look at any of the places which have recently or regularly chosen violence.
Yeah, people forget America needed a revolution to become America when the system was failing.
Start putting together a leadership team for as new American rebellion, and at least one out of every ten recruits will be a fed.
He should have been forced to sell all of his properties prior to his presidency.
