Donald Trump may claim that having to pay his civil fraud bond is tantamount to election interference by draining his presidential campaign resources, a legal analyst has suggested.
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On Monday, a New York appellate court reduced the former president’s bond amount in the civil fraud case against him and The Trump Organization from $454 million to $175 million. The court gave him a 10-day deadline to pay the lowered bond amount after his legal team argued that paying the full penalty would be “a practical impossibility.” His lawyers had requested a $100 million bond in the case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
In February, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump had to pay roughly $454 million in penalties, with interest, for inflating the value of his assets to obtain more favorable terms from lenders and insurers.
Trump confirmed he would pay the bond following the court’s decision and indicated to reporters that he would do so in cash.
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Lisa Rubin, an MSNBC legal correspondent, said that when Trump announced he would pay the bond in cash, he was “seeding a new variant of an election interference argument.” This would potentially enable him to argue those prosecuting him are depriving him of funds he would otherwise spend on his presidential campaign, she warned.
“When Trump tells us he plans to pledge cash as collateral, he is seeding a new variant of an election interference argument,” Rubin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“That argument goes something like this: Trump *would* fund his campaign and desperately wants to—but instead, he has to hand an insurer $200 million or so in cash to ensure radical leftists can’t seize and sell off his real estate empire while he appeals a lawless verdict.”
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Newsweek contacted a representative for Trump by email to comment on this story.
Trump has previously claimed the bond payment is election interference. In a Truth Social post on Monday, before the bond amount was reduced, the GOP’s presumptive nominee for 2024 wrote:
“Why should a Crooked, highly political New York Judge, Arthur Engoron, working in concert and coordination with an even more Corrupt Attorney General, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James, his Puppet Master, and the White House, be allowed to take away, and sell off, very successful properties and assets that took me years to zone, build and nurture into some of the best of their kind anywhere in the World—WHEN I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG!
“These Radical Left Lunatics and Communists ask me to pay a ridiculous and completely unheard of fine of over $450,000,000 only because they saw a similar amount in my bank account.
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“I had intended to use much of that hard earned money on running for President. They don’t want me to do that—ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”
Newsweek contacted the New York AG via website form to comment on this story.
In a statement on the appellate court’s ruling, James stressed that the lowered bond does not undo the ruling that Trump is liable for fraud.
“Donald Trump is still facing accountability for his staggering fraud,” the AG’s statement read. “The court has already found that he engaged in years of fraud to falsely inflate his net worth and unjustly enrich himself, his family, and his organization. The $464 million judgment—plus interest—against Donald Trump and the other defendants still stands.”
