Undoubtedly, for New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruining Trump is personal. She focused her entire election campaign on the promise of weaponizing her position to take down one man and hit the ground running when she won her seat.
She was encouraged in her relentless pursuit of Trump by Judge Engoron, who told Trump’s defense team that the former president was “just a bad guy” and that James should “go after” him.
Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filed a judicial ethics complaint against Engoron’s “weaponized lawfare.” Among the charges in the letter were accusations of the judge’s unlawful restriction of Trump’s constitutionally protected political speech, violations of regulations concerning political donations by contributing to Democrats as recently as 2018, and disregarding a ruling on the suitable statute of limitations in the case. She highlighted that Engoron notably smiled and posed for cameras at the trial’s onset, indicating his mindset before the trial began.
The case was a dream come true for James and Engoron, who got to punish Trump and then over-punish him for a victimless “crime” routinely carried out in the real estate and investment landscape.
So how obvious is James’s vendetta that even the equally vindictive Engoron had to call her out on it?
After accruing interest, the former president faced a penalty of approximately $454 million. To prevent the state from seizing his assets, including numerous real estate holdings, he would have been required to pay a bond slightly exceeding that amount to cover this penalty. However, an appeals court later decided he could satisfy this requirement by paying a reduced bond of $175 million instead.
But even Trump doesn’t have an extra $175 million lying around the living room couch. He was forced to find a company that could issue the bond. After numerous agencies could not secure the cash, he found a solution at Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC). Trump pledged to repay KSIC through a Charles Schwab bank account containing just over $175 million.
James was less than pleased. She had hoped that Trump’s real estate empire would fall and repeatedly commented that she was eying Trump Tower. Trump’s ability to secure the bond was unexpected and unwelcome news for her.
The specifics of how Trump and KSIC managed to obtain the funds and demonstrate their ability to guarantee the cash have been disclosed in court documents submitted on Monday night. Democrats immediately lost their minds.
This, after all, wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
In response to the bond court filings, former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann shared on X: “Something’s fishy here. If Trump has $175M free and clear, why not just directly post it and not pay a fee for a surety bond?”
Allison Gill, a contributor to the podcast She Wrote, expressed skepticism and described the documents as “shady” because the KSIC has only “138 million” in cash and would rely on an account worth $175 million as security.
But Weisman and Gill missed an essential piece of information. KSIC independently maintains over $539 million in assets and $138 million in equity and has access to over $2 billion in assets and $1 billion in equity, nearly $1 billion of which is cash and marketable securities.
It’s a memo that James appears to have missed as well. She is challenging the viability of KSIC’s financial ability to back the bond.
On April 1, Trump submitted the $175 million bond while contesting the civil fraud verdict against him. However, James contested the bond, seeking an “exception” to its validity under New York law. James questioned whether KSIC had the financial capacity to guarantee such a substantial sum. Trump’s legal team filed extensive documentation demonstrating that KSIC was authorized to post the bond on his behalf.
Engoron set a hearing for April 22 to address this matter, forcing James to prove her argument that the $175 million bond was invalid and further compelling her to prove to the court that her challenge is not “unnecessary and for vexation.”
Once again, Trump is eking out a victory over his persecutors, even if a small one. James’s insistence that he cannot post bond and must liquidate his assets proves that for James, it’s less about justice and more about turning Trump Tower into James Tower. And now, even her steadfast supporter Engoron seems to have abandoned her.
It seems even biased judges know when enough is enough.