Donald Trump’s son Eric, a co-defendant in his New York civil fraud case, accused Attorney General Letitia James of trying to bankrupt his father on the eve of the deadline to pay the $464 million bond in the case or risk losing his assets.
“They’re trying to deprive him of his cash, they want to bankrupt him, they want to hurt him so badly,” Trump told Fox News Sunday Morning Futures’ host Maria Bartiromo.
Trump was ordered to pay nearly $355 million in penalties last month after Judge Arthur Engoron found that he, his two adult sons and two other executives at the Trump organization, committed fraud by falsely inflating and deflating the value of its assets to receive lower taxes and better insurance coverage.
Trump is appealing the ruling but must put up the bond in order to have the appeal go forward.
In a court filing last week, Trump’s attorneys said he has approached 30 underwriters to back the bond but they refused. The former president’s lawyers claim they were seeking cash to back the bond, not properties.
Eric told Bartiromo on Sunday that insurance companies “were laughing” when he tried to secure the bond.
“No one’s ever seen a bond this size,” Eric said. “Every single person when I came to them saying, ‘Hey, can I get a half-billion-dollar bond?’ Maria, they were laughing. They were laughing.”
“Top executives of the largest surety companies had never seen anything of this size,” he continued. “What, they’re going to start seizing assets if he can’t put up something that’s not available in the United States?”
Eric’s meltdown comes days after the news that James’ office registered the judgement in Westchester County just outside Manhattan, a sign that Trump’s properties in the area– Trump National Golf Club Westchester and the mostly undeveloped 212-acre Seven Springs estate– are at risk of being seized.
