Laurence Tribe, a Constitutional law professor at Harvard University, was among those outraged this Monday at a New York appeals court deciding to lower the amount that former President Donald Trump must produce via a bond to hold off collections amid appeals of a fraud judgment against him.
The original amount required for that bond was around half a billion dollars, covering the entirety of Trump’s penalties imposed following the conclusion of the trial. The appeals court decided to let Trump post a bond of $175 million instead, giving him 10 days. The court didn’t provide much of a specific explanation for their reduction, instead prioritizing an outline of the basic facets to their final decision.
“The NY appellate court’s unexplained reduction from $454M to $175M in the bond Trump must post in 10 days to secure the judgment pending appeal is a travesty of justice. Let’s hope public disgust with this preferential treatment will come back to bite Trump politically,” Tribe wrote on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter.
Some argued that Trump was made beneficiary of what was ultimately a different set of legal standards, mirroring reactions to Trump making aggressive comments amid his wide-ranging criminal cases but avoiding the steepest consequences — like pre-trial detention — that other defendants might face. “This is an absolute travesty. It would not happen for anybody else,” Tristan Snell, formerly with the New York state Attorney General’s office, said on MSNBC early Monday. “Anybody else, it would be like, ‘Sorry buddy, you lost, pay up.’ For him, he gets his own set of rules.”
The underlying case against Trump originated with New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who a prepared statement from Monday indicated was remaining resolute amid what’s still an open question of how Trump will accommodate the still large bond and the looming appeals process that could be years in length.
