Donald Trump was supposed to put up a bond before appealing the nearly half a billion dollars judgment today. He had been convicted of fraud. But on the last day, a New York Appeals Court stepped in and lowered the bond to $175 million, and then gave him another 10 days to post it.Frankly, I'm baffled as to why the appeals court lowered the bond to less than half of the judgment. The trial judge issued a detailed and well thought out decision on why he had set the original verdict amount. Is the appeals court thinking of lowering the judgment amount - without even hearing the case?
This smells of favoritism - that we have a two-tiered justice system - one for the rich and famous (or infamous) and another for the rest of us. Do you think a normal person would have received this kind of break from the appeals court (even if they could not afford to post a bond)? Of course not!
Trump is still claiming that no one was hurt by his criminal activity. That is not true. By inflating his property values, he received a much lower interest rate on loans - cheating the banks out of millions of dollars. And by deflating those same property values when paying taxes, he cheated the state of New York (and its citizens) out of many millions of dollars.
Trump was found to have engaged in fraud - and that fraud garnered him hundreds of million dollars in ill-gotten gains. He should be forced to pay the entire amount. Anything less is not justice!
