But in a different court, a judge ordered the former president to go on trial next month.
I have nothing to say other than he’s famous, rich, and Republican (pretends to be). So the news is not surprising. The full story from Mother Jones:
Donald Trump received mixed legal news in New York Monday morning, with an appeals court handing the former president an enormous financial break in his civil fraud case. At nearly the same time, however, a different New York judge scheduled an unrelated criminal case against Trump to go to trial next month.
In the civil case, Trump had been found liable at trial for defrauding banks and insurance companies of more than $464 million (including interest and penalties) by giving them falsely inflated values for his properties—which meant he saved hundreds of millions on insurance policies and loan interest. In order to avoid having to pay the entire judgment while while he appeals that verdict, Trump needs to secure a substantial bond that the state could seize if Trump were to ultimately lose case. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted the civil fraud case, initially gave Trump 30 days from the verdict to start paying the money he owed. But on Monday, the state appeals court gave Trump an additional 10 days to post the bond. And instead of the half-a-billion-dollar bond the trial court had required Trump to post, he will now need to come up with just $175 million as he seeks to overturn the lower court’s verdict.
That’s a big win for Trump. The original deadline for Trump to pay up was today—Monday—and Trump had given no sign he was going to be able to post a half-billion-dollar bond. In fact, last week, Trump’s attorneys filed a motion with the appeals court begging for some kind of waiver of the bond requirements, saying that Trump had spoken with over 30 bond companies and none were willing to supply the funds unless Trump ponied up around $1 billion in collateral. Moreover, the bond companies wanted that collateral in liquid form, not in the form of any of Trump-branded golf courses or real estate holdings. Trump simply doesn’t have that kind of cash, his lawyers argued. They asked for a more obtainable $100 million bond.
