Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) has managed to post the reduced $175 million bond set for him by a panel of the appellate court.
According to a court filing, the $175 million bond he and the other defendants posted Monday was provided by Los Angeles-based Knight Insurance Group. The filing didn’t specify which assets Trump used as collateral for the bond.
Knight’s president, Amit Shah, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking information about the collateral.
Here is some information about the company that paid the bond. It is also not clear what fee the company charged SSAT.
Meanwhile Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing the hush money criminal trial that is due to start in New York City on April 15th, has stiffened the gag order barring SSAT from attacking people after he attacked the judge’s daughter.
The move comes after Trump attacked the adult daughter of New York County Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who had issued a gag order last week barring Trump from attacking court staff and prosecutors. It shows Merchan, who is presiding over Trump’s first criminal trial, isn’t shy about clamping down on rhetoric from Trump that he views as incendiary. Trump’s trial, over allegations he broke the law by paying hush money to a porn star to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with her, will start in two weeks.
…Over the weekend, Trump dubbed Merchan’s daughter a “Rabid Trump Hater” for her work at a firm that has Democratic clients. He also accused her of using a picture of him in jail as her profile picture on a social media account, but a court official said another person had taken over the account when that picture was added.
Trump’s attacks on Merchan’s daughter are part of a pattern. In two other court cases over the past six months, judges have imposed gag orders barring Trump from going after witnesses and court employees. But Trump has instead attacked the judges and some of their family members — who were exempted from the other gag orders, which judges can deploy to protect the safety of people involved in the case.
I frankly do not understand SSAT’s purpose in attacking the judge’s daughter. It angers the judge who will be presiding over his case while not providing any real benefit. We have become accustomed to viewing all of SSAT’s unhinged behavior as strategic, meant to increase his support with his base but surely we have reached the point of diminishing returns in this case? SSAT blankets the media with absurd rants against all his perceived enemies so attacking a judge’s daughter is hardly likely to create much of an impression in his devotees’ consciousness, while seriously prejudicing the judge.
I think that SSAT simply has no impulse control, a further sign of his cognitive decline.
As a white, upper-class man, SSAT has never had to develop impulse control.
Trump is already playing games with the new gag order. Prominently displaying a video clip on Truth Social of somebody else repeating the false claim that Trump previously made. He has already had too many warnings. It’s just a question of how much the judge is willing to impose.
Personally I like the idea of the judge throwing Trump into jail for one night and tell him the penalty will get longer quickly. Give Trump that direct wake up call that he can be put in jail without making it long enough to seem like he is being locked up to keep him out of the campaign.
Newsweek article
He’s trying to scare potential jurors and witnesses. Who wants to have a family member to be threatened by a mob boss with the biggest platform and numerous violent followers? That will be harder with the latest gag order but many will not want to take a chance (except for those who agree with said mob boss).
It doesn’t have to provide real benefit, just perceived benefit. E.g. considering that he’s a wanna-be mob boss, he might think that threatening the family will be an effective strategy. Alternatively, he could be acting on the premise that it might make the judge overreact and give him a reason to appeal.
He’s not going to win on the merits, so it’s hardly surprising that he’s trying other strategies.
LykeX @ 4 “Just perceived benefit” nails it, considering the bad judgement he always displays in business contexts. And political contexts. And all other contexts.
Sweet Jesus, 35% of Americans think this man is smart.
CNN
That Trump put up cash is quite possible. If you believe what Trump claimed he should have been able to scrape together the previous $500 million if he used every bit of cash he had. Trump habitually exaggerates that sort of thing but even if he was doubling his cash on hand he could handle $175 million. This should be a good chunk of the cash he had sitting around and get in the way of his campaign.
re birgerjohansson@5:
Which effectively proves how utterly stupid they really are.
I wish the judges would poke back. But they won’t.
For example one of the judges could offer to give Trump a delay if he takes a court-ordered mental competency test.
Or every time Trump asks for a dismissal, the should ask for a summary judgement, on the basis that Trump has only offered affirmative defenses. I feel that the media analysis has overlooked that because you can’t have a big char-topper trial when the defendant keeps saying “I did it but I’m immune to prosecution.” Wait what was the first part you said?
I frankly do not understand SSAT’s purpose in attacking the judge’s daughter.
He just asked for dismissal on the grounds that everyone in New York hates him and it’ll be hard to seat a jury that isn’t already full of Trump haters. You don’t need ChatGPT to write jokes about this stuff.
“Your Honor, even though I am guilty of murdering my parents, I request the court’s leniency because I am an orphan.”
SSAT does not aim to fight charges in the courtroom. Instead, he aims to discredit the judge by goading him into imposing an inappropriately large penalty, which SSAT can then use as “evidence” that he was indeed the victim of a witch hunt. It’s a calculated strategy, obvious to some but not the majority. The judge does actually have to tread carefully here.
He does it to keep his name constantly in the news.
It’s free publicity.
If it was anyone else, they would already have been remanded to pretrial detention. It would be a fabulous thing for him to be literally shut up. Taking away his cell phone and not having to hear about him for a whole week is a dream.
Tethys:
Very arguable. He’s constantly in the news whether or not he does this. Makes no difference.
Maybe, probably. But you are essentially claiming that he is special. Something you share with his followers, apparently.
(Also, were things otherwise, they’d be different)
A rather easily-achieved dream. Just don’t look at any news for a week. It’s in your power.
Katydid @ # 1: As a white, upper-class man, SSAT has never had to develop impulse control.
Au contraire, some are repressed/or calculating to and beyond the point of dangerousness. Nearly all (when sober, anyhow) have more self-discipline than many poor men … speaking from personal observation at multiple class strata.
Trump at this point really does seem to have an all-or-nothing situation in almost every dimension: plus, pushing the limits has worked often enough for him so far, and he doesn’t seem to know how to play the game(s) by any other strategy. He, as JM notes @ # 13, also operates “constantly in the news” as a matter of course, and this fits tightly into that strategy (not superfluously to it).
His lawyers probably delude themselves they/he can provoke the judge into doing something appeal-worthy. They would have better luck if they found some trick to transfer the case to Matthew Kacsmaryk’s court in Amarillo -- yee-haw!
John Morales @ # 13: … you are essentially claiming that he is special.
Stretching vague words to claim a gotcha => you ain’t got squatcha.
What “gotcha” do you intend to express by this?
Again: “If it was anyone else, [blah]”.
Anyone else but Trump ineluctably means that Trump is special, since nobody else can avoid [blah].
Unique is special.
Trump’s bond was posted by Mr Hankey, aka the Christmas Poo. How apropos.
He is in fact unique. The USA has never had to prosecute a former POTUS, so there is little legal precedent for judges to follow. If he was not formerly POTUS, the theft of classified documents alone would be enough to keep him in prison awaiting trial.
Tethys:
Sure. That’s why I wrote: “Unique is special.”
Special in so many ways. Aren’t we all?
—
Anyway.
Your original claim was that the intent was to stay in the news, my retort was that there was no need.
He’s been on all the news all the time, not excluding this very blog.
So, perhaps (very arguably) that’s actually the impetus, but it most certainly need not be and probably isn’t.
It is obviously quite speculative to claim “anyone else” given you also claim “there is little legal precedent for judges to follow”. Presumably, you mean ‘none’ rather than ‘little’, given you further claim that “The USA has never had to prosecute a former POTUS”.
Again: (Also, were things otherwise, they’d be different).
—
[meta]
Catherine Aird — ‘If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.’
He doesn’t have one, he’s a chronic ragebaby.
The title of that linked article comes from a single statement that is left unsupported. It can be dismissed, and the editor is either leaning into sensationalism, or should have known better.
It’s not just Americans he’s fooled. I have a Dutch friend--born and raised in the Netherlands, but she’s traveled on holiday. We met when I did some work in her country and I invited her to visit me in the USA. She’s seen the USA, knows (a bit) the scope…yet she’s a big Trump fan, and about two days after he was elected, she called me thrilled that Trump had built a wall across the southern border. I pointed out that the southern border is more than 3,000 kilometers (just less than 2,000 miles) and NOBODY was building a fence through desert, rivers, and farmers’ lands in 3 days.
Same situation with a British friend who told me when the Covid virus was killing thousands daily, that Trump made sure nobody in the USA died.
They were not insane when we met; in the intervening years, whatever news sources they’re consuming has changed their brains and they love Trump.
@Pierce R. Butler: so, you know SOME white rich men who have impulse control. That’s great! But they didn’t *have to* develop it; inherited riches protect against the real world. Talk to anyone in the service industries, in hospitals, or anywhere the staff have to deal with the public.
@ 20 Katydid
That’s entirely my experience -- and not excluding people on this very blog. They get swept up in an unhinged moral panic, totally unmoored from any basis in reality and you’re like, “are you okay? You used to sound vaguely sane and now you sound like Alex Jones on a bad mushroom trip”.
I’m not sure how it works. Some perfect storm of conformity, bigotry, and the mental laziness of seeking easy answers.
Very, very obvious today in the fashionable moral panic against those of us who happen to be trans. Like, why would you even care? But there are people utterly consumed with fear having just learned trans people exist (who, of course, have always existed).
@Silentbob: agreed. I’m astounded that so many people seem to be so crazily interested in whatever people might have under their clothes and controlling other people’s presentation of themselves.
It’s even worse when these people so irrational used to appear perfectly normal. Just recently, new parents in the neighborhood had their baby out in public for the first time. One of the neighbors immediately launched into a rant about how Democrats want to abort babies *after their birth*!!11! Eleventy! What has to go wrong in someone’s life that they can’t just look at a young baby in a stroller and say, “Congratulation” or “Cute baby!” and move on with their day?
I’ve worked in the service industries, and had to deal with the public. It’s a highly motivating experience, motivating to get you to work hard at university so you never have to deal with the public again. Why? Because in getting on for ten years I encountered fat arseholes, thin arseholes, white arseholes, black arseholes, Asian arseholes, Oriental arseholes, rich arseholes, poor arseholes, left-wing arseholes, right-wing arseholes, every kind of arsehole the world had to offer. In all that time I only came up with one reliable generalisation I could use going forward: I never met a Sikh I didn’t actively like. Not just not dislike -- every single one of them I ever encountered was warm, friendly, inclusive, funny, and just generally sound to be around. I have no idea what Sikh parents do to get their kids to grow up like that, but whatever it is, it works.
So: don’t generalise. Except about Sikhs.
Katydid @ # 21: … SOME white rich men … have impulse control.
Not the same: you’re citing symptoms of basic classism, calculated/inculcated aggression to keep workers in their place.
Trump has gone way beyond that, disrespecting damn near everybody (not named Vlad or Kim) but still roughly dividing the world into “friends” (fans) and “foes” (everybody else).
Trumps bond has been rejected by the court due to errors in its filing. I’m not surprised that Mr. Hankey has no idea how to post a bond, as his specialty is people with bad credit and sub prime auto loans.
The court requires a current financial statement from Hankey in order to record the bond. I wonder if it has to document whatever tfg had to put up as collateral as an asset?
Badland @ 16
Very apt.
And the flawed paperwork is on-brand for MAGA as well. If Mr Hankey hires the soon to be unemployed Lauren Boebert as a spokesperson it would be perfect.
The bond has been refiled but NY prosecutors are challenging it. This will force the Knight Specialty Insurance (Hankey’s company) to prove it has the money. My guess would be that Knight has the money and this is a mix of going through the motions after the first filing was wrong and a suspicion that Knight doesn’t meet NY state requirements. Knight could have liquidity issues also and have the money but not meet NY requirements for having the cash on hand to pay it immediately when the appeal fails.
Trump’s $175 million bond questioned by New York AG