An appeals court in New York drew extensive condemnation this week after deciding to lessen the amount of a bond required of Donald Trump as one path to holding off collections amid appeals of a judgment against him from a civil case that successfully alleged business fraud.
The bond was originally required to cover the entirety of Trump’s penalties, which approached half a billion dollars. That court lowered the amount to $175 million and gave Trump ten days.
“Yet again, [Donald Trump] gets special treatment with his own private system of justice. The NY Appeals Court has decided to give Trump more time to pay less money by reducing his bond from $454M to $175 and giving him 10 days to get the money. This makes absolutely no sense,” Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), wrote on X, the site formerly called Twitter.
The $175 million now demanded of Trump still represents a potentially formidable hurdle, as it’s about double the base amount covered by a recent bond for Trump in other civil proceedings where the penalties already snaked towards $100 million. Those proceedings originated with claims of defamation by writer E. Jean Carroll, who was challenging Trump over his antagonistic reactions to her account of him sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. Carroll repeatedly won at trial, with a jury and judge broadly upholding her claims of defamation and the legal claims covering the underlying assault alleged of Trump.
Trump did suffer a partial setback elsewhere in New York’s courts on Monday, with the presiding judge putting his criminal trial on allegations of falsifying business records on track for a start date in the middle of April. Though there’s still a ways to go with continued possibilities for something to derail, it’s set to be Trump’s first trial amid four criminal cases. The same judge already opted to allow some testimony from Stormy Daniels, a woman who allegedly had an affair with Trump and whose hush money lies behind the alleged falsification of records.
