Posted on 03/18/24
| News Source: Washington Post
The former president’s lawyers said in the filing that Trump and the Trump Organization, the real estate hospitality and golf resort company he solely owns, have been unable to get a surety company, an insurer that issues court bonds, to accept property as collateral — stalling any efforts to obtain a bond that is due to be posted in a week.
“Critical among these challenges is not just the inability and reluctance of the vast majority of sureties to underwrite a bond for this unprecedented sum, but, even more significantly, the unwillingness of every surety bond provider approached by Defendants to accept real estate as collateral,” Alan Garten, the Trump company’s general counsel, wrote in a sworn submission.
Garten said Trump and the company approached 30 surety companies through four brokers, proposing combinations of liquid and real estate assets, without success. None of them were willing to accept real estate collateral for appeal bonds, he said.
The legal team behind Trump, the likely Republican nominee against President Biden in the 2024 election, recently failed to get an emergency appeals judge to put off the 30-day deadline that the attorney general has imposed to give the company time to fulfill its appeal bond obligation. That judge also rejected an offer of a $100 million bond in lieu of the full amount. A full panel will soon examine the same issues.
Trump, his company and several current and former executives were found civilly liable in Manhattan state court this year for engaging in illegal acts to defraud banks and insurance companies by lying about the true value of his assets to falsely obtain profits and savings in business over a decade.