KEY POINTS
- Donald Trump and his co-defendants were in talks with insurance giant Chubb for a $464 million appeal bond, but the company backed out, a Trump Organization lawyer said.
- Chubb previously provided Trump’s $91.6 million appeal bond in writer E. Jean Carroll’s civil defamation case.
- In his New York civil business fraud case, Trump’s lawyers said they reached out unsuccessfully to more than 30 companies to secure a bond.
- Those companies include Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Liberty Mutual, Allianz, Chubb and Travelers, among others.
There’s another key point in the article: the reason why those other companies didn’t bite is that they would not entertain taking real estate as collateral. Chubb was the only company willing to even try and negotiate that, and Trump couldn’t come up with a satisfactory package for them.
Since we already know that Trump overvalued his properties for loan purposes, it is very possible that an objective analysis of their worth vs. their outstanding debt led to the conclusion that they are mostly underwater.
I’m seeing possibly subtext here that Chubb intentionally screwed Trump which was a surprise.
So Team Trump were talking with Chubb for bonds against both the $91 million judgment as well as the $464 million judgment. Team Trump was offering up both liquid assets (the Schwab brokerage account with whatever stocks and bonds are in there) and real estate. Team Trump really wanted bonds against the real estate.
It looks like Chubb said something like “Hmm, well we have two bonds we’re talking about here. Lets do the $91 million bond in purely liquid, and then we can look at the real estate for the $464 million bond. Seeing how you need the $91 million bond in a couple of days lets get that knocked out first”. Team Trump agreed handing over all the liquid assets (the Schwab account) so the $91 million bond is now “fully collateralize” meaning liquid money to back up the bond.
Then Team Trump says “Okay the $91 million bond worked great! Now lets do the $464 million bond backed by Trump real estate!”
Chubb says “Hard pass, not interested.”
So all the good stuff is gone and Trump has nothing good left to try to secure any bond on the $464 million. Chubb makes whatever commission they placed on top of the $91m bond, and simply pays out the $91m to Jean Carrol when the appeal fails. Jean Carrol wins, Chubb wins, Trump gets played.
I say all of this with zero love for Chubb, but when a grifter gets grifted, its satisfying to watch.