Trump Secures a Lifeline Over Massive Fraud Bond … for Now

Donald Trump secured a big win related to his New York bank fraud ruling on Monday, securing a reduced bond as well as a delayed deadline. The self-proclaimed billionaire and GOP front-runner will have an additional ten days to pay a reduced $175 million bond.

“It is ordered that the motion is granted to the extent of staying enforcement of those portions of the Judgment (1) ordering disgorgement to the Attorney General for $464,576,230.62, conditioned on defendants-appellants posting, within ten (10) days of the date of this order, an undertaking of $175 million dollars,” wrote Susanna Molina Rojas, a clerk of the Appellate court, in an order filed Monday.

The decision still bans Trump and his sons from serving as directors of officers of New York businesses for several years, as well as former Trump Organization CFO Alan Weisselberg and the business’s former controller, Jeff McConney.

Trump and his attorneys argued in a court filing last month that it would be “impossible” to secure a bond covering the full amount of the $464 million disgorgement, claiming they had tried and failed to the several guarantors and 30 suretors they had spoken to to lend Trump money on his terms.

“The exorbitant and punitive amount of the Judgment coupled with an unlawful and unconstitutional blanket prohibition on lending transactions would make it impossible to secure and post a complete bond,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

But in a bizarre rant on his social media platform last week, the GOP presidential pick admitted that he actually has half a billion dollars in cash, which he decided would be better used to fund his presidential campaign than pay back the state of New York for defrauding its taxpayers, banks, and businesses.

“THROUGH HARD WORK, TALENT, AND LUCK, I CURRENTLY HAVE ALMOST FIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS IN CASH, A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF WHICH I INTENDED TO USE IN MY CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday. “THE OFTEN OVERTURNED POLITICAL HACK JUDGE ON THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT A.G. CASE, WHERE I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG, KNEW THIS, WANTED TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME, AND THAT’S WHERE AND WHY HE CAME UP WITH THE SHOCKING NUMBER WHICH, COUPLED WITH HIS CRAZY INTEREST DEMAND, IS APPROXIMATELY $454,000,000.”

And Trump is expected to come into even more money in the coming months. Also on Friday, Truth Social successfully merged with Digital World Acquisition Corporation—a deal that will allow the company to be traded publicly and is expected to net the financially beleaguered Trump upwards of $3 billion (though he may not be able to tap into that cash for some time.)

Ultimately, the decision comes as a blow to New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office was gearing up to begin seizing some of Trump’s New York assets, such as 40 Wall Street and Trump Tower, as early as Monday.

This story has been updated.

One nagging detail is still plaguing Donald Trump as the deadline looms for the $464 million bond in his New York bank fraud trial: how much Mar-a-Lago is worth.

Trump faces a Monday deadline to post the massive bond in his fraud trial—and if he doesn’t, New York state is prepared to seize his assets. Amid a Monday morning freak-out over the reality he now faces, Trump once again doubled down on the claim that Mar-a-Lago is worth far more than the judge claimed—an exaggeration that won him the huge fraud fine in the first place.

“[Judge Arthur] Engoron’s fraudulent valuation of Mar-a-Lago for $18,000,000, when it is worth 50 to 100 times that amount, is another piece of the Election Interference HOAX. It’s all a giant and totally illegal Witch Hunt against Biden’s Political Opponent!” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday morning, a handful of minutes before entering a Manhattan courtroom for a hearing related to his Stormy Daniels hush-money trial.

In other words, Trump is once again trying to claim that Mar-a-Lago could be worth as much as $2 billion—surely a claim that an appeals court could consider when hearing his desperate attempt to overturn the judgment against him.

Attorneys for the GOP presidential pick have claimed in court filings that Trump has tried and failed to get upward of 30 suretors to help him secure a bond for the half-billion-dollar disgorgement. But after a trial that found Trump had massively overinflated the value of himself and his assets, with evidence of a massively downsized evaluation for one of his biggest Florida properties, who would?

So Trump has attacked the thorny detail for months, claiming every which way that the trial constituted an “election interference scam,” that the estate’s value is worth “50 to 100 times” more, flailing accusations that the price tag was cooked up either by New York Attorney General Letitia James or Engoron, and outright demanding that “the only fraud was the valuation of Mar-a-Lago at $18,000,000 by the Crooked Judge in order to help his already fully debunked narrative.”

“They should pay me damages for what they have done, and ultimately will,” Trump wrote ominously on Sunday. “THESE ARE NOT THE PEOPLE THAT MADE AMERICA GREAT, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT ARE DESTROYING AMERICA!”

Still, the accusations that either New York official conjured the valuation is, itself, a fabrication. In the judge’s initial September 26 ruling, in which he decided that the Trump Organization had committed fraud, Engoron turned to a local—a Palm Beach County property appraiser—for an estimate on the 20-acre property. It was the appraiser that determined Mar-a-Lago was worth “between $18 million and $27.6 million,” rather than the $426 to $612 million valuation that Trump had tagged it for, and which Engoron noted had overvalued the property by “at least 2,300 [percent].” That lower assessment was for tax purposes.

A California judge on Monday dismissed X owner Elon Musk’s pathetic lawsuit against a nonprofit that studies misinformation and hate speech for highlighting the social network’s flaws.

Musk sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate in August, accusing the research group of conducting “a scare campaign to drive away advertisers.” The group had shared research that hate speech had flourished on X (formerly Twitter) after Musk took over in the fall of 2022.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer struck down the lawsuit on Monday, ruling that Musk definitely isn’t the free speech champion he claims to be.

The CCDH “has met its burden at the first step of the anti-SLAPP analysis,” Breyer wrote in his ruling. Strategic lawsuits against public participation, also known as strategic litigation against public participation, are lawsuits meant to censor, intimidate, or silence critics by saddling them with legal defense costs until they drop their criticism.

“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose,” Breyer noted. “Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech.”

“The Court notes, too, that X Corp.’s motivation in bringing this case is evident. X Corp. has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp.—and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism.”

Musk indicated he intended to take legal action against the CCDH in July, when X parent company X Corp sent the nonprofit a letter accusing the group of making “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.”

X Corp alleged that the nonprofit was funded by X’s competitors or foreign governments “in support of an ulterior agenda.” The letter specifically cited research on hate speech on X that the center published in June. One of the eight papers the organization published found that X took no action against 99 of the 100 Twitter Blue accounts that the center had reported for “tweeting hate.”

But Breyer found that X Corp’s allegations about the CCDH’s supposedly misleading publications “provide the only support for X Corp.’s contention that it has been harmed.”

Advertisers have left X in droves since Musk took over, promising to make X a bastion of free speech. The most recent exodus was in November, after an explosive Media Matters report revealed that X has been placing ads for brands including Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to posts that promote Hitler and Nazi beliefs. But Musk has tried to blame any and everyone other than himself, accusing companies of trying to “blackmail” him by withholding ad dollars.

It may be, though, that companies just don’t want their branding next to hate speech. Since taking over X, Musk has allowed Nazis and the Taliban on Twitter—and even verified them. He also has done nothing to rein in antisemitic and transphobic speech on the platform. If anything, he’s one of the main sources of it.

As a result, the platform’s value has nosedived. X is worth just a fraction of the $44 billion Musk paid for it—by Musk’s own estimate, X’s value may have dropped 90 percent.

This story has been updated.

MSNBC reporters are in revolt against the network’s decision to hire former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, publicly calling out their bosses on air.

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the co-hosts of Morning Joe, made it clear Monday morning that they disagreed with the decision and had no intentions of allowing McDaniel on their show.

“We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons, including, but not limited to, as lawyers might say, Ms. McDaniel’s role in Donald Trump’s fake elector scheme and her pressuring election officials to not certify election results while Donald Trump was on the phone,” Scarborough said.

Brzezinski echoed the sentiment, saying, “We believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage. But it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.”

They then played a compilation of the many, many falsehoods McDaniel has spewed on air.

McDaniel made her on-air debut during Sunday’s episode of Meet the Press, just days after NBC announced she would join the network to provide conservative political analysis. NBC News political coverage chief Carrie Budoff Brown explained that McDaniel was chosen because she can provide “an insider’s perspective on national politics and the future of the Republican Party.”

Before McDaniel appeared Sunday, Meet the Press host Kristen Welker told viewers the appearance was a “news interview” that had been scheduled for weeks. During the segment, McDaniel did finally admit that Joe Biden had legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. But when Welker asked why it had taken McDaniel so long to say so, McDaniel was quick to caveat her words.

“I’m going to push back a little because I do think it’s fair to say there were problems in 2020 and to say that does not mean he’s not the legitimate president,” McDaniel said.

Despite multiple investigations, many paid for by Trump himself, there is no evidence of fraud during the 2020 election.

Shortly after McDaniel’s interview, NBC anchor Chuck Todd tore into the network’s brass for hiring the former RNC chair.

“I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation,” Todd told Welker. “Because I don’t know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News, so I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract.”

Todd pointed out that McDaniel has “credibility issues” and that many journalists at NBC were “uncomfortable” with the decision to bring her on board.

“Many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination,” he said. “So when NBC made the decision to give her NBC News’s credibility, you got to ask yourself, ‘What does she bring NBC News?’”

Many NBC employees have been asking themselves that exact question. Multiple NBC political reporters, speaking anonymously, told Politico that had they been consulted, they would have advised against hiring McDaniel because she has nothing to offer the network.

McDaniel is not close to Republican leaders in Congress. She is unpopular with anti-Trump voters, who think she tipped the primaries toward the former president. And she has fallen out of favor with Trump himself, who ousted her from the RNC in March. So it’s not as if she can bring any insider information to the table.

What’s more, MSNBC President Rashida Jones told multiple anchors over the weekend that they would not be forced to book McDaniel, The New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources. So if McDaniel has nothing special to offer the network and no one is required to bring her on air, why is she even there?

Ohio Representative Jim Jordan completely shut down while answering a simple, direct question about who’s still listening to MAGA ramblings about the proven-to-be-baseless 2020 election lie.

During an interview on 60 Minutes on Sunday, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee couldn’t defend the campaign that he and his Republican coalition have spent the last four years failing to prove.

“Well what about this idea that the 2020 election was stolen? You think that these companies should allow people to say that, and individuals can make up their own minds and that there should be—” said anchor Lesley Stahl, before being interrupted by Jordan.

“I think the American people are smart. I’ve not said that, I’ve said there were concerns about the 2020 election, I think Americans agree with that,” Jordan said.

“No they don’t,” Stahl retorted. (Several polls conducted over the last year indicate that roughly two-thirds of the country believes that Biden was fairly elected and don’t believe the conspiracy holds any water.)

“You don’t think there were concerns with the 2020 election?” Jordan shot back.

“Most people don’t question the result. That’s all I’m saying,” she responded.

“Oh, they’re there,” Jordan interjected

“They don’t question whether Biden won or not. Right?” Stahl continued, before insisting against Jordan’s blank expression. “Right?” she prompted.

“Oh, OK. Right,” Jordan said, seemingly agreeing.

Watch the bewildering exchange below.