Trump fights bond requirement
NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers kept pressing an appellate court Thursday to excuse him from covering a $454 million fraud lawsuit judgment for now, saying he’d suffer “irreparable harm” before his appeal is decided.
The financial requirement is “patently unjust, unreasonable and unconstitutional,” one of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s lawyers, Clifford Robert, wrote in a letter to a New York appeals court.
It’s the latest in a flurry of arguments and counterarguments that Trump’s attorneys and New York state lawyers are making ahead of Monday, when state Attorney General Letitia James can start taking steps to collect the massive sum — unless the appeals court intervenes.
James, a Democrat, said last month that she was prepared to seek to seize some of Trump’s assets if he can’t pay, although it wasn’t clear how quickly she had in mind.
A message was sent to James’ office Thursday seeking comment on its plans.
Trump’s lawyers want the court to hold off collection, without requiring him to post a bond or otherwise cover the nine-figure judgment, while he appeals the outcome of his recent civil business fraud trial.
Appealing doesn’t, in itself, halt collection. But Trump would automatically get such a reprieve if he puts up money, assets or an appeal bond covering what he owes.
A federal judge handed down prison terms Thursday to the last of six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to breaking into a home without a warrant and torturing two Black men in an hourslong attack that included beatings and repeated uses of stun guns before one was shot in the mouth.
U.S. District Judge Tom Lee called the culprits’ actions “egregious and despicable” and gave sentences near the top of federal guidelines to five of the six men who attacked Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker.
Ex-officers sentenced:
The exception was for former police officer Joshua Hartfield, 32, who received a 10-year sentence. Lee said Hartfield did not have a history of using excessive force and was roped into the brutal episode, but he failed to intervene in the violence and participated in a cover-up.
Brett McAlpin, 53, the fourth-highest-ranking officer in the Rankin County Sheriff ’s Office, received a sentence of about 27 years. McAlpin nodded to his family in the courtroom and offered an apology before the judge sentenced him.
“This was all wrong, very wrong. It’s not how people should treat each other and even more so, it’s not how law enforcement should treat people,” he said, without looking at the victims. “I’m really sorry for being a part of something that made law enforcement look so bad.”
In March 2023, months before federal prosecutors announced charges in August, an investigation by The Associated Press linked some of the deputies to at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.