The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James called on a state appeals court to deny former President Donald Trump’s request that it place a stay on executing the $464 million civil fraud judgment against him while he appeals the case.
Trump faces a Monday deadline to turn over the money in order to pursue his appeal.
James — a Democrat who ran for office in 2018 promising to get Trump — said after last month’s ruling that if he misses the deadline, she is prepared to seize Trump Organization properties like 40 Wall Street and Trump Tower.
New York Attorney General Letitia James says she’s prepared to seize Trump’s properties if he doesn’t pay the massive fraud judgment levied against him. (Video: ABC) pic.twitter.com/fiCD9fFAfr
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) February 21, 2024
In a Monday court filing to the Supreme Court of New York, Trump’s attorneys said “ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is ‘a practical impossibility.’
“These diligent efforts have included approaching about 30 surety companies through 4 separate brokers,” the filing says. “A bond requirement of this enormous magnitude – effectively requiring cash reserves approaching $1 billion … is unprecedented for a private company,” the lawyers added.
They suggested that $100 million is the limit for bond companies.
Trump’s legal team asked the court to “stay the execution of the monetary portion of the judgment.”
Dennis Fan, a senior solicitor general in James’ office, said in a Wednesday filing, “[T]he Court should not consider defendants’ new allegations and arguments – which contend that a full bond or deposit is a ‘practical impossibility’ […] because they are procedurally improper.”
He continued, “Indeed, 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.
“ … There is nothing unusual about even billion-dollar judgments being fully bonded on appeal,” Fan argued. “Defendants object to a possible ‘fire sale’ if they were to sell assets to generate cash to use as collateral for a bond or as a deposit – but the alternative would be to shift the risk of executing on defendants’ illiquid assets to OAG.”
He also refuted Trump’s argument that he would not be able to use his properties as surety to obtain the bond to make his appeal.
Fan suggested that a solution for Trump reaching the $464 million amount would be working with multiple bonding companies.
“[D]efendants’ new factual allegations and legal arguments fail to support their extraordinary request for a stay based on a bond or deposit of less than one-fourth of the money-judgment amount. Defendants’ argument that obtaining a full bond is purportedly impossible is based on the false premise that they must obtain a single bond from a single surety for the entire judgment amount of $464 million,” he wrote.
“But appealing parties may bond large judgments by dividing the bond amount among multiple sureties, thereby limiting any individual surety’s risk to a smaller sum, such as $100 or $200 million apiece,” Fan added.
Trump was found guilty in February of inflating asset values in paperwork to lenders.
The $464 million includes a $355 million fine imposed by a New York judge, plus over $100 million in interest, as well as additional amounts required for the disgorgement for Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
Trump signaled earlier this week that his next legal move may be to invoke his federal constitutional right against excessive fines.
He posted on the social media platform Truth Social articles referencing the Eighth Amendment as a recourse to prevent New York from imposing the large fine.
The Eighth Amendment states: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
One of Trump’s posts included a commentary piece from the Los Angeles Daily News titled, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Trump’s $355 million fine.”
In it, columnist Susan Shelley contends that a case Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion for in 2019 could help Trump.
The Supreme Court held 9-0 in the Timbs v. Indiana case that the Eighth Amendment is applicable to the states.
The justices ruled against Indiana for assessing a fine that was “grossly disproportionate” to the gravity of the offense. The state had sought to confiscate defendant Tyson Timbs’ $42,000 Land Rover. The value was more than four times the maximum $10,000 fine that he was liable for in a criminal case that involved controlled substances and conspiracy to commit theft.
“The Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause is an incorporated protection applicable to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause,” the now-deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote.
“The prohibition embodied in the Excessive Fines Clause carries forward protections found in sources from Magna Carta to the English Bill of Rights to state constitutions from the colonial era to the present day,” she wrote in the ruling. “Protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history for good reason: Such fines undermine other liberties.”
“They can be used, e.g., to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies,” Ginsburg observed.
Trump also posted a Wall Street Journal editorial that asserted that James’ $464 million bond requirement effectively denies him due process.
The Journal editorial board said: “As we wrote last month, the judgment is overkill. None of Mr. Trump’s business partners lost money lending to him or claimed to have been deceived by his erroneous financial statements. No witness during the trial said his alleged misrepresentations changed its loan terms or prices, and there was no evidence that he profited from his alleged deceptions.”
It concluded, “Whatever his transgressions, defendants are entitled to due process, which includes the right to appeal. Ms. James is trying to short-circuit the justice system to get Mr. Trump, as she promised she would during her 2018 campaign.”
