Trump Wins Bond Reduction Hearing, Media Proceeds to Meltdown

Donald Trump has had an up-and-down week regarding his indictments and court rulings this week.

Trump was seething after Judge McAfee set a court date for the Alvin Bragg hush money case.

However, he took a victory lap after an appellate court reduced the bond in the Letitia James fraud case to less than half of the initial order.

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Trump was going to have to get a bond worth nearly $500 million, which has proven to be impossible.

Monday was the deadline for Trump to pay the judgment or James could have moved forward with seizing his properties and Trump would have lost his right to appeal the case.

Instead, the ruling on Trump’s appeal regarding the size of the bond came through, and it was reduced to a “mere” $175 million, which Trump stated that he would abide by and pay within the 10-day extension the court gave him.

Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley, who was very critical of the initial judgement, stated, “The Court of Appeals may have felt that they can't prejudge the evidence, and so to reduce the bond further would have been heavy-handed.

“I actually think they could have reduced this bond to virtually nothing, because the amount set by Engoron was absurd... There were no victims. There was no money lost. You had people that loaned this money and wanted more business, and so this figure seemed to be just snatched out of the air.”

MSNBC did not have the same reaction, with Tristian Snell, the former New York assistant attorney general, having a complete meltdown over the ruling.

He stated, “Honestly, this is so infuriating I don’t even know what to do. I don’t even know if I care what the process is that these judges are arriving at. Whatever it is, it’s flawed.

“I can tell you that much. This is a different process for this person. We have decided that he gets his own private court of justice.

"He has a private plane. He has private clubs that he lives in. He basically has fashioned himself his own private militia to try to take over the Capitol.

“Now he’s getting his own private system of justice. This is an absolute travesty.

“It would not happen for anybody else, anybody else. It would be like, sorry, buddy, you lost. Pay up. For him, he gets his own set of rules."

I have started to read through the Engoron judgment, and I believe that Snell is the one who is not getting this right.

A cursory reading showed that Engoron and James went significantly overboard, trying to take back profits Trump made because of the loans he was able to secure due to his alleged “fraud” on financial forms.

Honestly, this was some pretty creative accounting on James’ part and hardly the norm that we see in cases such as this.

I stand by my original assessment that Trump would lose the original case, which he did, but that he would see the settlement either overturned or reduced on appeal.

Right now, at the very least, I think we are going to see that massive number reduced down to a “reasonable” fine, which will be a crushing defeat for James, who has been touting her “big win” ever since Engoron announced the ruling we all know was a foregone conclusion.