Actually, I saw this on Digby’s Hullabaloo, who got it from Raw Story about a CNN report that Trump in full “panic mode” about his failure to secure a bond in the NY state fraud case. It does answer one very important question: Why didn’t Chubb bail Trump out on this one? Chubb came up with the 91 million dollars for the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit.
Turns out the the CEO of Chubb got into hot water with his investors over that:
Chubb's agreement to underwrite Trump's Carroll defamation bond was followed by criticism aimed at its CEO, Evan Greenberg, who had been appointed by Trump to a trade policy advisory committee and a business group to stymie the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Wednesday last week, Greenberg sent a letter to investors, customers and brokers who had expressed concerns about that bond.
“As the surety, we don’t take sides, it would be wrong for us to do so and we are in no way supporting the defendant,” Greenberg wrote. “When Chubb issues an appeal bond, it isn’t making judgments about the claims, even when the claims involve alleged reprehensible conduct.”
He added that Trump’s bond in the defamation case was “fully collateralized.”
To make matters worse for Trump, he was counting on Chubb to bail him out again. Trump was in negotiations with Chubb on the fraud bond. Trump was offering up real estate he supposedly owns as collateral. Everything looked like it might work out again for our con artist, when suddenly, “Whoosh!” Chubb pulled out of the negotiations.
That’s when Greenberg sent out the above letter to his investors and customers.
My guess is that those same investors, customers, and brokers told Greenberg his neck was on the chopping block if he tried to setup another bond for Trump. I’m a financial moron, but I thought that most of these big bond companies did not take property as collateral. In fact, the E. Jean Carroll defamation bond is primarily based upon some Schwab account that Trump has (in other words, it’s mostly liquid). And according to this reporting, Chubb was going to take “Trump properties” as collateral for that other big bond.
Sounds like Greenberg was in the middle of a big “No, No!” on this one.
And I put Trump properties in quotes because of another thing I heard on MSNBC the other night (no video or links at this time). It’s an open question of how much property Trump actually owns outright. Besides inflating the values of all of his properties, many of those same real estate holdings may have loans or liens on them. Trump may only be a partial owner in several of them, and trying to sell off those properties might be very complicated.
After Monday, we the public might start to learn more details of Trump’s so called business empire because Tish James will have to go through Trump’s financies to obtain any of the money New York State is owed. And I imagine that has Trump terrified. Everything comes down to wealth for Trump, and his whole identity is wrapped up in his fraudulent “wealth.” Once that curtain is pulled back, what happens to the little crook behind those curtains?