Trump achieves significant win and minor setback in New York legal battles

Former President Donald Trump was set to begin his day in potentially deep financial turmoil but ended it in a surge back to one of the world’s richest people despite a setback in his bid to avoid trial on criminal hush money charges.

Trump faced a deadline on Monday to post a bond of $464 million in a New York civil fraud lawsuit before a state appeals court slashed the amount he would have to post to $175 million, which he says he will cover in cash. The former president also learned that jury selection will begin April 15 in the case accusing him of illegally concealing a $130,000 hush-money payment he made to a porn star in the lead-up to the 2016 election, narrowing his chances to delay further the first trial in four separate indictments he faces.

Here is what happened Monday in the blockbuster courtroom spit screen:

Major financial lift

The ruling by a panel of five appellate court judges for the Appellate Division in Manhattan marked an about-face of fortune for the former president — his attorneys last week said posting $464 million in his civil fraud case was a “practical impossibility” — on top of his net worth soaring to $6.5 billion ahead of the Wall Street unveiling of his new social media venture, making him one of Bloomberg Billionaires Index’s 500 wealthiest people in the world.

The appeal in the case could take several months to resolve. Justice Arthur Engoron in February found that Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth to secure favorable loans and insurance premiums.

Trump and his legal team, who were separately in court facing rebuke from the hush money trial judge, celebrated the decision by the group of five appellate judges.

“This monumental holding reins in Judge Engoron’s verdict, which is an affront to all Americans,” Trump attorney Alina Habba said. “This is the first important step in fighting back against Letitia James and her targeted witch hunt against my client, which started before she ever stepped foot in office.”

For now, Trump has 10 days to obtain the bond and will have to pay a fee and pledge roughly $200 million in cash and other investments as collateral.

Engoron in February imposed several restrictions in addition to the steep fine on Trump and his business associates, such as barring him from obtaining a loan from a New York bank for three years. The same restrictions apply to his adult sons for two years, and Engoron also extended the appointment of an independent monitor to the Trump Organization.

But the appeals court on Monday paused most of the restrictions Engoron put in place, except it left in place the independent monitor. However, Trump and his adult sons can still maintain oversight of the family business for now.

Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Trump said he would “abide by the decision” and either post a bond or put up the money himself. Trump said the appellate court’s decision to reduce the bond was revealing of how “ridiculous and outrageous” the $464 million judgment against him is.

Although the appeals court did not rule directly on the merits of Trump’s appeal, the ruling to reduce the bond amount by roughly two-thirds signals the court could be sympathetic to his appeal going forward. The $175 million amount is around the amount Trump’s counsel argued was the maximum penalty he could have owed.

“I think they wanted to give Trump a chance of appealing this case,” said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers.

Rahmani cautioned that the ruling may not indicate the appeals court is planning to reduce the amount of the judgment.

“But the real practical reason is, there’s a chance that Trump wins in November and imagine having a bond company and trying to enforce the bond against the sitting president. That’s going to be very challenging, to say the least,” Rahmani added.

Discovery disappointment

Meanwhile, in a courtroom in Manhattan, Trump and his attorneys were dealt a blow during a hearing Monday morning by Judge Juan Merchan, who sided with District Attorney Alvin Bragg in a controversy over discovery.

Merchan found Bragg had appropriately fulfilled his discovery obligations, and the judge set a trial start date of April 15, three weeks later than the originally scheduled start date.

Trump had asked Merchan to drop the hush money charges altogether or delay the trial by at least 90 days after he received more than 100,000 pages of discovery this month, within weeks of the initial March 25 trial start date.

The eleventh-hour discovery dumps were related to Michael Cohen, who is expected to be one of Bragg’s top witnesses, and they came from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Trump’s attorneys argued that Bragg, an elected Democrat, should have retrieved the documents last year and provided them to Trump as part of his prosecutorial obligations. Trump’s attorneys said the defense team only received them because Trump issued a request for them to the U.S. attorney’s office in January.

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The attorneys accused Bragg of attempting to hide exculpatory evidence related to Cohen, who was prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office in 2018 in part for the hush money scheme in which Bragg has now implicated Trump.

Bragg, for his part, blamed the U.S. attorney’s office for failing to deliver all of the discovery in a timely manner and accused Trump of using a “red herring” argument to call for a case dismissal and lengthy trial delay.