NY attorney general says appeals court should disregard Trump’s claim it’s impossible to get a bond
By Kara Scannell, CNN
(CNN) — New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office pushed back on Donald Trump’s claim that he can’t find an insurance company to support his $464 million bond in the civil fraud case, telling the a state appeals court they should ignore the argument.
“Defendants here had no reason to wait for their reply to raise their allegations and arguments about the difficulty of obtaining a bond, as their efforts to obtain that bond began before their stay motion was filed and indeed before judgment was even entered,” the state attorneys wrote.
Trump’s lawyers on Monday said it was nearly impossible for Trump to secure a bond after he was turned down by 30 insurance companies. They told the appeals court the insurers wanted cash or stock as collateral worth about half a billion dollars and they would not take real estate as collateral.
Trump has until Monday to post the bond unless the appeals court agrees to grant his motion to delay fronting the money until after the appeal is heard.
The attorney general’s office says Trump should try to get insurance companies to pool together to underwrite the bond or better explain the shortcomings in their negotiations.
“Yet defendants supply no documentary evidence that demonstrates precisely what real property they offered to sureties, on what terms that property was offered, or precisely why the sureties were unwilling to accept the assets,” the attorney general’s office wrote.
“As far as the Court can infer, sureties may have refused to accept defendants’ specific holdings as collateral because using Mr. Trump’s real estate will generally need ‘a property appraisal’ … and his holdings are not nearly as valuable as defendants claim,” the attorney general added.
The attorney general’s office criticized the sworn statements from Trump’s insurance broker Gary Giulietti and Alan Garten, the top lawyer at the Trump Organization, saying they are unreliable.
They argue that Trump should have disclosed that Giulietti, who has been a friend of Trump’s for decades, testified at the civil fraud trial and was not found credible by the judge. Garten, they argued, is also unreliable because he has a stake in the outcome.
They also offered a suggestion – turn properties over to the judge.
“If defendants were truly unable to provide an undertaking, they at a minimum should have consented to have their real-estate interests held by Supreme Court to satisfy the judgment …. or should have otherwise pledged security in real-estate holdings with sufficient value to secure payment of the entire judgment.”
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