Donald Trump's narrow escape from financial calamity is raising a
few eyebrows today.
The ex president was thrown a lifeline last week when
an appeals court reduced the bond in his civil fraud
case to just
175,000,000. He posted that bond late last night,
sparing him from having his assets seized while he appeals
the larger
$454 million penalty. And what we're learning about just who
came to the rescue.
There's a company run by a billionaire supporter of Donald
Trump's. According to Bloomberg, billionaire Dawn Hankey,
who is the chairman of Knight Specialty Insurance,
said this quote. Knight reached out to Trump's team to
offer its services after hearing about former
president's trouble arranging a bond despite his history of support
for the ex president hanky telling Bloomberg this quote,
Yes, I voted for him in the past,
but this is a business deal and this is what
we do.
I've never met Donald Trump or talked to him on
the phone.
We're back with Melissa Michael Basil and Molly Melissa.
There are geopolitical national security concerns and questions.
Pete Stark wrote a whole book on it about where
a
president's money comes from, particularly when the sources are foreign
and there's nothing illegal about this.
But but where is there sort of an ethics question?
When is Donald Trump tells us all the time he's
running for president?
There are a lot of shades of the civil fraud
trial and Gates a lot of the shades of the
questions that have arisen over the years about Donald Trump's
finances. More generally, when Knight Insurance stepped in to offer
this bond,
it did so after many,
many other bond companies refused to do so because the
president of the former president wasn't a good risk.
A lot of his assets are not liquid.
He didn't have the cash reserves.
To be able to put up the collateral for a
bond,
you actually have to put up more than the bond
is actually worth in order to get it.
And so I think there are big questions about what
Mr.
Hankey did in order to allow night insurance to go
forward with this.
There's some mix of cash and other assets that were
used to secure the bond.
I think we should know where the cash came from.
Is it Donald Trump's cash?
Is it cash from some other source?
Those are all questions that sort of go to that
broader question of who is funding him,
who is now beholden to him,
who is he beholden to.
And all of that, I think,
is critically important as a matter of transparent currency going
into the election.
Michael Steele, this is NBC's reporting on some of this.
Hanky has been an investor in Axos Bank,
the financial institution that refinanced Donald Trump's loans on Trump
Tower and Trump National Doral Miami in
2022. Axos Bank has loaned Trump $100 million
in his refinancing of Trump Tower and
125 million more for Doral
Hanky. Who's this billionaire is believed to be the biggest
shareholder in Axos Bank.
We should say that he claims that he wasn't aware
of the Trump Tower loan
at the time. Your thoughts?
OK, sure. I'm going to lend you
$125 million and not know about it or not be
aware three times,
right? I mean, I mean,
let's see if I can count Trump Tower,
Trump National Corral and his bail.
I don't know. See, this is the thing.
They all think we're stupid.
They all think they can just put this ish out
in the ether.
We're just like, oh, OK,
well, that just doesn't make sense.
I mean, there's a reason why
30 some other banks and surety firms said no.
And so there has to be a reason why he
said yes.
And that's because especially because he's running for president,
not despite not all as a side thought,
absolutely because because it's important to know how is this
funded.
Again, this is only 175 million of a
$454 million judgment. So the question still remains,
OK, what happens to the other,
you know, 200 and and 70,
some $1,000,000 that's that's not being discussed right now.
There's that piece. Is there some back deal to sort
of cover that down the road?
What how was this deal put together?
And and that level of scrutiny has to be a
part of this conversation.
I'm sorry, you just cannot get away with
Oh well, I've never met the guy.
I've never, you know, really talked to him,
but I've given him over $100 million three times.
Yeah, I mean I I guess your point to the
the 30 that said no,
if you just take the statistics of the industry,
maybe half and half you voted from before right there.
It's not like all thirty were you know what do
they call,
you know, the Trump deranged people they probably included people
support him.
And and again because one of the challenges with covering
Trump is we don't imagine what he would do because
he cares so little about the institutions where most of
the people to talk about him on TV hail from.
I think if to put on the table did he
promise him he could be his acting Treasury Secretary?
Did he promise him something that this guy,
who none of us knows cares about,
but because it's 30 and one right,
30 people like him said no one said yes,
it does create a lot of sort of heat and
attention around why he was different from the other 30.
And I guess my question for you,
Michael, is do you think we'll ever find out what
it was?
Yeah, I think we will.
Because these things always get exposed at some point.
They just do. And particularly given now that
there are a lot of interests out there,
not just in media and politics,
but there are a lot of other groups out there
that are on the battle line of trying to safeguard
the presidency,
the democracy and the rule of law and the processes
that we have tried to live by sometimes not as
well as other times.
But nonetheless we've all concertedly moved the country forward in
a positive direction that are that will be interested in
this.
And I think it is appropriate to know.
Yeah. In any other business transaction,
yeah, you probably that level of detail is not necessarily
warranted.
But I bet you in those business transactions you weren't
talking to someone who was running for governor or president
or US senator.
So it does matter right now.
And it's important for the,
I think if I'm the run of running this company,
I'm just putting the whole thing out there.
Why? Why not? Well, I don't understand why you just
can't disclose.
OK, here's the terms of the deal.
This is what the court,
the court's going to want to know.
So we should know.