CNN
—
New York Attorney General Letitia James' office has pushed back on Donald Trump's claim that he could not find an insurance company to back his $464 million bond in a civil fraud case.
“The defendants herein need not wait for their answer to raise their allegations and arguments about the difficulty of obtaining bond, since their efforts to obtain that bond began before their motion for injunction was filed and indeed before judgment was entered.” State attorneys wrote.
After being turned down by 30 insurance companies, Trump's lawyers said Monday that it is nearly impossible to get a bond. They told the appeals court that the insurers wanted about half a billion dollars worth of cash or stock as collateral, and that they would not take real estate as collateral.
Trump has until Monday to post the bond, unless an appeals court agrees to grant his request to delay the release of the money while the appeals court considers it.
The attorney general's office said Trump should try to get insurance companies to file a bond or better explain the flaws in their negotiations.
“However, the defendants did not provide documentary evidence to demonstrate which real assets were provided to the guarantors, on what terms the assets were provided, or why the guarantors were unwilling to accept the assets,” the Attorney General's Office wrote.
“As far as the court infers, the sureties may have refused to accept defendants' specific properties as collateral because Mr. Trump's use of real estate would normally require a 'property appraisal' … and his properties are not as valuable as the defendants claim.” The Attorney General added.
The attorney general's office criticized the sworn statements of Trump's insurance broker Gary Giulietti and top Trump Organization lawyer Alan Gordon as unreliable.
They argue that Giulietti, a friend of Trump's for decades, testified in the civil fraud trial and that Trump should have revealed that he lacked credibility by the judge. Gordon, they argued, was unreliable because he had a stake in the outcome.
They also gave a suggestion – transfer the property to the judge.
“If the defendants cannot really make the pledge, they should at least have agreed to have their real estate interests held by the Supreme Court to satisfy the judgment, or have secured security in real estate shares of sufficient value to pay the entire judgment.
