Former President Donald Trump is embroiled again in another legal saga, this time involving a staggering $91.6M bond for a defamation case brought against him by veteran journalist E. Jean Carroll.
$91.6M bond
But it’s not just the eye-popping sum that’s causing a stir – it’s the potential national security implications that have experts sounding alarm bells.
According to David Cay Johnston, an author and professor at Syracuse University College of Law, the bond agreement raises serious concerns.
In a recent MSNBC op-ed, Johnston highlighted that Trump’s debt is owed to Chubb, a mammoth Swiss insurance company with significant interests in Russia.
With Chubb owning three insurance firms in the Kremlin’s backyard, Johnston paints a worrying picture: “I call owing a fortune to anyone, but especially foreign interests that do business in Russia, a national security nightmare.”
The framers of our Constitution took care to ensure that presidents would be independent of outside influence, foreign and domestic, through the emoluments clauses, which I teach my students at Syracuse University College of Law. But the Founding Fathers’ concern was with income, not debts, leaving a loophole that if Trump regains office would almost certainly become a national security nightmare.
No one in 1787 imagined that an American president would owe more than a half-billion dollars in damage awards, with more cases pending, to a company with global business interests that in part depend on remaining in the good graces of a dictator like Putin.
Who’s footing the bill?
Johnston’s sentiments are echoed by former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who took to Twitter to express his unease. Weissmann points out that while Trump may have posted a portion of the bond, the details remain murky, leaving the public in the dark about who exactly is footing the bill.
“But one thing’s sure,” Weissmann asserts, “Trump is beholden to someone for a lot of money.”
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