Isn’t it common for appeals courts to do things like this?
I can’t speak for New York courts, but where I practice I’ve never seen such a thing.
Per a report on CNN, highly unusual but not entirely without prior examples:
A New York appellate court reduced Trump’s bond to $175 million from $464 million, and granted him 10 days to come up with the payment.
“It’s highly unusual that it would be reduced at all,” said Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor in New York. “And it’s highly unusual that it would be reduced by this amount.”
But, Epner said it’s not unprecedented, citing the 1980s fight between Texaco and Pennzoil, in which a court reduced Texaco’s bond from more than $10 billion to $1 billion. Texaco ended up filing for bankruptcy in 1987.
I don’t know. But I didn’t hear or read anything predicting that this result was considered by people who do know. Everyone seems to be surprised.
No particular answer but the only hypotheses that I can come up with are:
- Collecting from Trump might be so difficult that it actually serves the State of New York to drop his bonds down enough that he voluntarily gives them the money. His appeals are unlikely to succeed so they’re probably doing better at collecting from him by dangling the rope for him to hang himself on.
- The appeals court is highly liberal and has norm of accepting pretty much any appeal for lenience, and feels like they’d look politically motivated if they didn’t do likewise, here.
- As a local New York corruption-meister, Trump and his pardoned-pals like Rod Blagojevich knew which palms to grease to get some lenience.
I’d lean pretty heavily towards 1 or 2.
I’d agree that New York stands a much better chance of getting 175M from Trumps grubby mitts than 464m. That’s still a lot and it would be nice if it came from the RNC and his campaign contributors, if he still can’t get someone to put up a bond.
It is clear he can’t raise a bond for 464M and I’d hate to see him slide out with bankruptcy or the months of legal wrangling to work through a byzantine web of shell companies hiding what his actual personal ownership is of the assets.
Well that’s what I am telling myself whilst taking another big swig from my bottle of Fukitall.
The first scenario sounds plausible - along the lines of ‘a bird in the hand’ sort of thing.
An unsuccessful appeal then means TFG has given up $175m immediately with no additional effort required from NYC to collect. No doubt getting the remaining $289m will be a lot harder, but while the whole sordid process plays out, I can’t imagine Trump having any leeway to conduct business in New York. So as far as ‘shutting Trump Org down’ goes, it’ll be quite effective.
If he’s borrowing money, the lenders might also start to hit him.
It’s like someone should make a Constitutional amendment barring people from office who have financial entanglements that could compromise their integrity…
Of course to get that $289 mil. they will be competing , like vultures over a bloated carcass, against Chubb and whatever unlucky sod gives him the bond for $175m, for tasty tidbits of what remains of the Trump assets. So it might be better to get in early.
As appalling a decision as this is, it was by a NYS court that Trump played no role in appointing.
When and how did Trump stack the New York State courts?!
I don’t think this gripe has any basis in factuality.
Fucking idiot nailed.
They have ruined, RUINED, Schadenfreudey Monday for me!
Is this woman tied to Trump somehow? I wouldn’t be surprised, but it doesn’t say in the article.
I knew I was reaching too hard for the joke… mea culpa.
Not surprised in any way that this fuckhead has slipped out of responsibility YET AGAIN. He’ll die without ever really paying for all the sleazy shit he’s done.
Don’t you mean unpresidented?
But at least he’ll be dead. What worries me is that when he slithers off this mortal coil, his lunatic following will go full whacked-out nut-job conspiracy theorists and commence a round of killing people.
Of course they will. That goes without saying.
But since Jan. 6, how many MAGAts have actually done any real harm to anyone in his name? There are millions of them, but, ISTM, vanishingly small numbers of actual incidents, most of which were threats, intercepted in advance, that might not have resulted in anything even if they hadn’t been stopped
It seems to me that despite his and their bluster, they are actually paper tigers. And that the hundreds of prosecutions and convictions of Jan 6ers have taught a salutory lesson to most of the relatively small numbers who might have actually had the means and gumption to act, or to organize others to act.
Yeah, but I would argue the lesson is actually “don’t fail this time.”