George Conway, the vocally anti-Trump lawyer and legal analyst, on Monday suggested that New York Attorney General Letitia James may have reason to be happy about Donald Trump’s recent appellate court ruling lowering his bond.
In February, Trump was hit with a massive penalty after being found liable in a civil fraud suit brought against him and The Trump Organization by James and her office, which accused him of a long-term scheme to inflate his net worth and the worth of his assets in order to secure more favorable business loans. With interest, the penalty is now more than $450 million, and Trump had until Monday to secure a bond of a little more than that amount in order to be able to appeal the ruling.
Due to the high amount of the penalty against him, Trump had difficulty securing the amount, according to reports and court filings, with over 30 surety entities denying his request for coverage of the bond. Trump’s legal team last week requested that a New York appeals court allow him to pay a much smaller bond, and on Monday morning the court ruled in his favor, allowing him to pursue an appeal with only a $175 million bond and giving him 10 more days to provide it.
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Despite the fact that this ruling will allow Trump to delay enforcement of or potentially overturn the penalty against him, Conway, one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project anti-Trump political action committee, suggested in a series of posts on X that James might be able to see a win in the appellate court’s move.
“If I were the NYAG’s office, I’m not sure I wouldn’t be pleased with the Appellate Division’s order cutting back Trump’s bond to $175 million,” Conway wrote. “The reason is that if Trump can actually bond that much of the judgment, then the State of New York is guaranteed the ability to collect at least that much if it wins the appeal—without having to send lawyers around the country chasing Trump’s assets down, which would be a time-consuming, costly, and difficult process.”
He later added in another post: “That of course assumes Trump can post the $175m. But if he can’t, the State isn’t any worse off than it otherwise would have been—it would have to chase Trump around for the full amount.”
Countering Conway’s second post, Trump has indicated that he intends to pay the appeal bond and do so quickly.
While the nearly half-a-billion dollar bond purportedly presented a headache for Trump, he recently claimed to have $500 million in cash-on-hand, though indicated that these funds would be dedicated solely to his ongoing presidential campaign.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s office via email for comment on Monday afternoon.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.