After Donald Trump posted a bond of nearly $92 million on Friday as he appealed the jury’s verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s civil defamation case, legal analyst Andrew Weissmann warned on Sunday that the former president may be “beholden” to people behind the bond.
Trump, the likely GOP nominee in the 2024 presidential race, was ordered in January to pay $83.3 million to Carroll, a former Elle columnist, for damaging her reputation after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. A separate jury last year awarded Carroll $5 million from Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in those cases and said they were politically motivated.
The $91.6 million bond, which Trump posted on Friday, consisted of the $83.3 million judgment, along with statutory interest added by the State of New York. The bond was secured by the Federal Insurance Company, a part of insurance company Chubb Corporation. The bond has since sparked speculation over why the Federal Insurance Company decided to guarantee Trump’s bond and who within the company made the decision.
The national bureaucracies are all their own little fiefs, and Comey’s FBI thought he could hold Hillary’s feet to the fire once she got into office by making her first hundred days a scandal plagued mess.
It isn’t that these folks don’t care. Its that they’re running their own like intrigues and power grabs, in an effort to get a bigger slice of the budget pie and more control over DHS. Trump and Biden are just pieces on a board, and announcing “Trump Scandal!” is only beneficial if the agency heads think they can squeeze something out of the Biden admin in exchange.
Because at the end of the day, every bureaucrat since Allen Dulles knows how power ultimately flows through Washington D.C. Presidents get a seat at the table, but if they overplay their hands… well… ask a Kennedy (or a Nixon) what happens next.
Good point and that’s poor phrasing on my part. I should’ve said “intelligence was seemingly ineffective when it was Russia”
But yeah I guess I want to wish/hope that someone will do something I just don’t think it’s the intelligence community anymore 😞
A lot of someones are doing a lot of somethings. Trump isn’t entering some kind of vacuum uncontested. He’s the point of the spear by which a group of theological fascists are carving their way into the higher ranks of government.
There are large parts of the DC intelligence and law enforcement communities that are big Trump-heads. And there’s a sizable chunk of the media establishment (The Epoch Times, the Washington Times, OAN, the Clear Channel networks) that are openly advocating for his return. Evangelicals LOVE Trump, and they have enormous outsized sway in national politics thanks to their superior organization and fundraising abilities.
Liberals have sequestered themselves from these venues, so they’re not seeing the mood inside Houston Second Baptist Church or the Florida Chamber of Commerce or the LAPD. But there’s a real pro-Trump movement in this country that’s regained its footing after Jan 6th. They’re out fighting for his reelection far harder than the DC liberals are fighting against it.