Rachel Maddow asked a question that will probably also have to be answered in court. What did Trump do to deserve such a generous bond?
Maddow said:
Explicitly, he’d take real estate as collateral. That was no problem for him. Trump’s lawyers apparently never told the court that this guy had offered to post the bond. In fact, they told the court that no one would post this bond. The appeals court apparently believing that no one would post the bond then lowered the bond, lowered it down to $175 million which ta da was then covered by this guy who had already offered to put up the much larger amount even though the court was told by Trump’s lawyers that no one would do that. What did Trump have to do to be the recipient of such generosity from a man who after all is not that generous. A man who after all would threaten illegally to lock you up for missing a car payment. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose bank charged a Harlem soul food restaurant, 268% interest on their business loan. A guy who demanded daily payments from a small business in Massachusetts that he was charging over 90% interest to right this does not seem like a guy who’s involved in a lot of super generous business dealings. What’s he charging Trump for this $175 million favor.
Reuters quote, Don Hankey, the billionaire businessman whose company provided the $175 million bond that Trump posted in his New York civil fraud case told Reuters that the fee his firm charged the former US president for the bond was quote low. Hankey declined to disclose the fee. Lawyers say surety companies typically charge a fee of between one and 2% of the face value of the bond, which in this case would mean his fee should have been somewhere between 1.75 and $3 million. Quote. Hankey says he now feels his company did not charge Trump enough.
Video:
The big question that Trump and Hankey will have to answer in court is what did Trump promise Hankey in return for this sweetheart deal?
There has been some misleading reporting that the bond has been tossed out and Letitia James can begin seizing Trump’s property, but this is not accurate. The hearing has not happened yet, but when the hearing occurs, if Hankey can not prove that he is a legitimate and legal source of the bond, it could be tossed out, and Trump will have to back to looking for the bond again.
There are lots of shady pieces to the fraud bond.
They all deserve scrutiny.
This part of the story is not over.
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