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New York Attorney General Letitia James has asked Judge Arthur Engoron to void the $175 million bond in Donald Trump's civil fraud judgment, citing concerns that the bond company doesn't have the funds.
In a filing on Friday, James said Knight Specialty Insurance Company, which underwrote Trump's bond, has not been able to show that it has enough collateral to back it. She described KSIC as "a small insurer that is not authorized to write business in New York and thus not regulated by the state’s insurance department," and said the company had never written a surety bond in New York or in the past two years in any other jurisdiction.
James’ office is seeking to have Trump put up a replacement bond within seven days of a ruling. A hearing is set for Monday.
KSIC is part of the Los Angeles-based Hankey Group of Companies, owned by billionaire Don Hankey. Several of his companies have run into trouble with federal regulators in the past. Hankey is also a major stockholder in a San Diego financial company that had refinanced some of Trump's loans when other banks refused to do so, NBC News reported.
Trump's struggle to secure a bond for his civil fraud judgment was well documented, despite his protests that he had cash in hand. A week before the deadline to post his bond, his lawyers pleaded for a stay in the $454 million judgment, telling Engoron that they’d been rejected by 30 surety companies that would not accept real estate as collateral.
An appeals court handed him a lifeline at the last minute, lowering the bond amount to $175 million. Trump posted bond days later, which has put KSIC — and Hankey himself — under a microscope. Earlier this month, Hankey told Reuters that he didn’t expect the legal and media scrutiny that came with putting up Trump’s bond. “We thought it would be an easy procedure that wouldn’t involve other legal problems and it’s not turning out that way,” he said. “We probably didn’t charge enough.”