It appears that real estate fraudster Donald J. Trump's last-minute attempt to fix the problems with his prior bond filing has created more questions and offered no believable answers.
After being found guilty of fraud and ordered to pay $454 million, Donald Trump was offered a lifeline by the court to post only a $175 million bond during his appeal. It appears the impulse to commit fraud is too much, and Trump's latest attempt to cure his insufficient bond seems to create more questions than it answers.
Professor of law Andrew Weissmann, a frequent MSNBC legal analyst and former Dept. of Justice official, is raising questions.
"Something's fishy here," he wrote late Monday night. "If Trump has $175M free and clear, why not just directly post it and not pay a fee for a surety bond? And the agreement does not give Knight a lien on the account as collateral and seems to afford Trump a two-day window to dissipate the account."
A screenshot of a portion of the filing, posted by MSNBC's Lisa Rubin, states, "Schwab, as custodian of the account, has acknowledged KSIC's right to exercise control over the account within two business days of receiving notice from KSIC of KSIC's intent to activate the control."
Attorney and journalist Seth Abramson in a series of posts on social media claimed, "so this is looking very bad for Donald Trump. He says in his Monday night filing that the Schwab account has $175.3 million *in total*, so *if* Axos Bank is depending on that same account for a (semi-)liquid $100M in collateral on another loan, this bond filing is DOA."
After asking, "Is Trump double-dipping?" Abramson posted more details.
RawStory
Weissmann is dead on. A known cheapskate, why would Trump pay for a bond and not just offer the account?
