Former President Donald Trump posted bail of $175 million this Monday for the civil fraud case in New York. With the payment of the sum requested by the New York court of appeals, the former president avoided having several of his properties seized, including Trump Tower.
It was Alina Habba, Trump's lawyer, who assured in a statement to which NBC obtained access, that the former president and current Republican candidate had posted the bail that the New York appeals court imposed on him at the end of February. "As promised, President Trump has posted bail. He looks forward to vindicating his rights on appeal and overturning this unjust verdict," Habba explained.
The amount deposited, however, is considerably less than what was initially imposed. The original sentence required the former president to pay a fine of 464 million dollars. But his legal team appealed this sentence and obtained a reduction down to 175 million dollars that has just been deposited, as the former president himself promised during a television appearance just after reaching the agreement:
I greatly respect the decision of the Appellate Division, and I'll post either $175 million in cash or bonds or security or whatever is necessary very quickly within the 10 days, and I thank the Appellate Division for acting quickly.
According to The New York Times, the former president achieved the figure requested by the New York court of appeals after reaching an agreement with the company Knight Specialty Insurance Company, a company based in California specialized in these types of legal agreements.
Judge Merchan extends gag order against Trump
On the other hand, while the former president was depositing the fine, another legal problem was added to the list that Donald Trump has already accumulated. This time for another trial that is pending in New York and that will begin next April 15. A case in which Judge Juan Merchán imposed a gag order that prohibited the former president from issuing statements about witnesses, prosecutors, jurors or court personnel involved in the criminal trial.
Now, the magistrate extended the silence order and also added the relatives of the people involved in the trial. He did so after the former president attacked his daughter, whom, the judge claims, he attacked online. For this reason, Merchán said in statements collected by NBC, that he decided to extend this order:
Trump's pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose. It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are 'fair game' for Defendant's vitriol. It is no longer just a mere possibility or a reasonable likelihood that there exists a threat to the integrity of the judicial proceedings. The threat is very real.
