Legal doubts remain about the insurance company posting Trump's $175 million bond in his New York fraud case.
"But the Trumpian part is that even though, or perhaps because, it may be part of a Trump scam, Knight now too may be on the hook for $175 million as it won't automatically get out from underneath its own proffered surety."
Hankey, a billionaire, has already said that his company will be able to post the money for Trump.
He was reacting to a comment on X by lawyer Dave Kingman, who wrote that Knight will not be able to post the $175 million.
"Understand that Knight Specialty has a problem. This bond cannot be approved. Under the CPLR [Civil Practice Laws and Rules] the surety will remain obligated under the bond until a replacement bond is filed. Trump is unlikely to get a replacement bond. Knight Spec will be liable AND Trump won't have a stay [on enforcement]," he wrote.
Why does this guy get to run for president when he appears to have committed millions of dollars in fraud? Shouldn’t that be jail time for anyone else?
To actually give an answer, it's because the Constitution very deliberately does not allow criminal convictions to disqualify someone. This was done because it was, and in plenty of places still is, common practice for a government to simply make up charges and arrest any opposition, thus disqualifying them from running.
You always have to look at this kind of stuff from the other side. Would you really want a Trump to be able to disqualify an opposing candidate for running a red light once twenty years ago?
Why does this guy get to run for president when he appears to have committed millions of dollars in fraud? Shouldn’t that be jail time for anyone else?
Because he was found guilty in a civil trial and not a criminal one. Think of OJ, convicted of civil wrongful death but not murder in a criminal court. Lose money, but don't go to jail.
Edit: This article is garbage. Letitia James hasn't announced shit, this is reporting what some guys on Twitter are talking about. I wouldn't hold my breath until a better source reports about it.
The State of New York gets to collect on the entire judgement. That is the amount that the trial court found him liable for and that's the amount he must pay.
The bond amount being lowered only means that he needs to post that amount as a guarantee against the judgement in order to stop execution before he appeals. If he loses his appeal, he still needs to pay the full amount of the judgement. Since the bond was no good, it is the same as if he didn't post anything.
I often go to threads about Newsweek articles to see the discussion, but I never click the articles anymore. They're a total rag, and seem to have figured out that people on both sides will click an article saying Trump is going to get something that's coming to him.
yet another post where the title says "Trump To Actually Be Held Responsible For Crimes Committed On Live TV" and the article is just people who ahve nothing to do with either Trump or the law guessing that someone could possibly do something with no idea as to whether anyone will actually do anything. It's raw speculation and it degrades the platform, but anything that says "Trump Good" or "Trump Bad" will of course get a million upvotes.
I don't blame the community, I blame the media. The media needs to generate views to sell eyeballs. They need to keep you clicking and watching by saying that the resolution is just around the corner. If they waited to report on things that actually happened nobody would care.
DISCLAIMER: This is a complete tangent from comments on the original post, but the original post is likely garbage anyway so I'll just go with it.
I don't know why people think that creating a copy-cat version of Reddit with "federation" will do much of anything to solve the problems with online "communities".
The problem with Reddit may have been partially the for-profit corporate part, or the admins, etc but it was definitely not exclusively those things.
Every single online "community" that has popped up since Web 2.0 has versions of the exact same problems. Maybe they're difficult to solve inherently, but I am not sure because it seems like everyone just creates the same site structure and I think at least some of it has to do with the structure.
Is there anyone trying to not make the next Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Reddit? Someone that's trying to actually make something different? Like something useful or with a fundamentally better moderation model? Because if so maybe I should waste my time on that instead of these copycat platforms.
It's not just "they're bots" or "they're Russians" either...because Nextdoor has a pretty stringent verification policy, is based around localities, and it's still essentially Facebook for NIMBYs.
To be honest, I find myself reading them more. Their goals are to drive clicks more than political ideals. It's garbage, but consistent garbage with minimal bias compared to most other options. At least you know where they stand...
Surely Hankey isn't offering up $175 million on Trump's behalf out of the goodness of his own heart. This is surely an investment where he can gain privileged access to the Trump administration if he gets into office again, maybe get some lucrative government contracts out of it.
Shit, he offered to put in 475, but while on the call to set it up, trumps lawyers found out they got it lowered to 175, and told Hankey he was no longer needed.
Then had to go back for the 175 because no one legit would even know that.
It's very possible trumps lawyers knew a bond wouldn't work, but knew by the time that was found out, Hankey was on the hook.
It's a lot easier for trump to avoid paying Hankey than the government.
He should have gone to his buddy Vince McMahon who for some reason keeps selling stock and now has like a billion dollars in cash. I'm sure it's Vince's "fly to a non extradition country" fund when the heat gets too much, but he can lend Trump half
Since it was deemed profitable to do so. Every vote is an ad impression and trying to manipulate or correct the value just means even more ad impressions.
Eric Lisann was reacting to a separate comment by another lawyer, Dave Kingman, who wrote that Knight Specialty Insurance will not be able to post the bond for Trump.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, one-time federal prosecutor Lisann wrote that Knight Speciality might not be able to post the bond for Trump and will be liable for the full amount because it had given a guarantee to the court.
"Looks like there is a real possibility that this Don Hankey-owned Knight Specialty Insurance does not itself have liquidity, and did not get from Trump collateral, sufficient to provide legally cognizable assurance that it can pay $175 million on demand in the event of a judgment-affirming appeal," he said.
Trump posted a $175 million bond on April 1 in order to prevent the seizure of his assets by New York while he attempts to appeal the civil fraud ruling against him.
The bond was then rejected by the court's filing system shortly after it was posted due to missing paperwork, including a "current financial statement."
James, whose office led the fraud case against Trump, later raised questions about the "sufficiency" of the bond and noted that the surety backing it, Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC), is not admitted in New York, meaning it's ineligible to obtain a certificate of qualification from the Department of Financial Services.
The original article contains 712 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I hate Trump and I hope he gets all that's coming to him, but I don't think this is accurate.
In order for Trump to delay payment of the fines he was court ordered to pay he needs to appeal the courts decision. Under the local law that means he doesn't have to pay till the new case is received or rejected and when received is done, but he does have to post a bond to make sure he doesn't just appeal to get a delay and to ensure at least some of the fines are paid.
At first the bond was set to the entire amount, this was challenged by Trump and adjusted to be only a part by the court.
Then Trump attempted to post the bond from Knight, but there was a technical issue with the posting. Some documents were missing including a financial statement. This has lead to speculation it may be that these documents show the bond won't hold up and thus would get rejected. It may however just be an error and get corrected right away. There is the opportunity to repost it and correct the errors, so we will see what happens.
The article goes on into discussion and speculation by a couple of lawyers on Xitter that if the bond doesn't hold up, Trump would have to pay the full amount. And this would probably mean some of his property would get seized. However none of this has happened yet and is thus total speculation. The lawyers also go into a lot of speculation about the bond and the insurer.
Let's just wait and see what the court says. Instead of this grabbing popcorn and yelling grab his shit before we're good and well ready. I've heard Trump getting what's coming to him so many times now and it never seems to happen, so I don't want to get my hopes up.