How did Trump pay his $175m fraud bond – and who helped him?

Donald Trump has now paid the $175m bond in his New York civil fraud case, a week after he was handed a lifeline by an appeals court granting him a 10-day extension and slashing the $464m value by more than half.

After an 11-week jury trial, Mr Trump and his fellow Trump Organization executives were found liable for inflating the value of company assets in order to obtain favourable terms from banks and insurers between 2011 and 2021. He was hit with penalties of $354m plus more than $110m in interest.

But after Judge Arthur Engoron handed down the verdict on 16 February, the Republican presidential candidate’s attorneys complained that they were finding it a “practical impossibility” to raise the full $464m for the bond needed to appeal the case, after approaching more than 30 surety companies through four separate brokerages.

That left Mr Trump facing the prospect of seeing the crown jewels of his New York real estate empire repossessed by state Attorney General Letitia James, before the panel of appellate division judges granted him an unexpected lifeline last week.

On Easter Monday, Mr Trump finally posted the $175m bond – preventing Ms James from starting to seize his assets.

The former president secured the bond through the Knight Specialty Insurance Company.

“As promised, president Trump has posted bond,” the former president’s attorney Alina Habba told ABC News in a statement.

“He looks forward to vindicating his rights on appeal and overturning this unjust verdict.”

Knight Specialty is owned by California businessman Don Hankey, whom MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin reports is known as “the king of subprime car loans”, specialising in lending to automobile buyers with poor credit ratings at high rates of