That could mean the attorney general seizing assets as early as next week.
Even though the court later ordered the attorney general to remove her letter, the coverage was already widespread.
The judgment amount is around $355 million, plus 9 percent backdated interest, which totals around $464 million.
President Trump can appeal against the verdict without posting a bond, but according to state law he wouldn’t be able to put a hold on the penalties without one.
That is unless the appeals court grants an exception.
President Trump said the trial court judge pulled the $355 million figure “out of THIN AIR.”
“If I sold assets, and then won the Appeal, the assets would be forever gone. Also, putting up money before an Appeal is VERY EXPENSIVE. When I win the Appeal, all of that money is gone, and I would have done nothing wrong.”
President Trump pointed out the state judge had already been overturned by an appeals court on several points and accused the judge and attorney general of corruption.
Why $355 Million?
According to a sworn affidavit submitted by Trump attorney Alan Garten, President Trump had brokers seeking the bond from surety companies even before final judgment was handed down.In the last days of the trial, the attorney general increased the proposed disgorgement figure from $250 million to $355 million.
Crucially, the case was brought under statutes and asked for penalties that only a judge could order, and so was a bench trial.
The massive penalty figure President Trump faces is not supposed to be a punitive damage amount, which can only be awarded by a jury, but rather “disgorgement,” or the repayment of ill-gotten gains.
President Trump’s attorneys have argued that the figure proposed was arbitrary and did not represent disgorgement.
While the defense’s position is that there were no ill-gotten gains in the Trump Organization transactions, they pointed out several “elementary” calculation errors wherein the attorney general and judge double or triple counted transactions and confused proceeds with profit figures.
State attorneys say they came to the disgorgement figure through a formula their expert witness devised, and the judge accepted those calculations.
Defendants argued unsuccessfully at trial that the third-party expert witness lacked the knowledge to make such calculations and the figures were arbitrary.
Four Separate Brokers
Mr. Garten stated that four separate brokers have negotiated with some 30 sureties, the largest in the world, to no avail.The companies told the defense they cannot use real estate as collateral, and the Trump Organization’s primary assets are real estate.
Gary Giulietti, an executive with the largest privately held insurance brokerage firm in the world, provided context in a second sworn affidavit.
He stated that only a handful of companies are authorized to issue bonds that large, and generally have internal policies limiting single bonds to $100 million.
When they do issue higher bonds, they only do so for large, publicly funded companies, he added.
He also stated that he had never seen such a large bond required for a private individual or company, and found it punitive to require a defendant to divest assets to appeal their innocence.
The attorney general filed a proposed reply to the court, which contained a letter claiming that the court should “not consider” what the defense called a “practical impossibility.”
The state attorneys argued that neither Mr. Garten nor Mr. Giulietti was a credible witness, as they had not been deemed such by the trial court.
The attorney general dismissed the idea that obtaining $464 million in bonds was impossible but pointed only to cases with large, publicly funded companies like Apple and Samsung as Mr. Giulietti had asserted.
They proposed that President Trump obtain several separate bonds instead, and claimed the defense never provided details on the surety companies’ reasons for not issuing the required bond.
State attorneys also claimed that perhaps his assets were not as valuable as he says, urging the court to not lower his bond requirement.
