Updated: 8:45 am Pacific, 14 Mar 2024
News organizations, as well as TMV, reported last week that Donald Trump had posted a $92,000,000 surety bond in order to appeal the judgment that led from his assualt and defamation of E. Jean Carroll.
Tom Nichols, an academic specialist on international affairs and retired professor at the U.S. Naval War College., agrees. His current essay for The Atlantic: Donald Trump Is a National-Security Risk; The GOP candidate should not be given intelligence briefings.
Backstory: Federal Insurance Company (FIC), a division of the insurance conglomerate Chubb Ltd., wrote the bond, gambled that Trump is good for the money.
There were some things missing in that just-get-it-out reporting. Unfortunately, the questions seem to live only in alternative media, not the Wall Street Journal or New York Times.
One of those things: an oddly structured bond agreement, one prejudicial to Carroll. Another: Russia. (Don’t act surprised.)
1. That prejudicial bond agreement
Trump’s lawyers and Chubb’s risk-averse managers initially wrote the $92,000,000 bond so that FIC would have 60 (sixty) days to pay up should Trump lose his appeal.
As Jose Pagliery at the Daily Beast points out, that 60-day period gives someone approximately $3 million, assuming the $92 million “were invested in the S&P 500 stock market index during a similar time period at the start of the year.”
Tom Gober, a forensic accountant and certified fraud examiner, told Pagliery:
Knowing all of the public record being what it is on Trump’s false statements and times he hasn’t paid his bills, all of that… I’m sure the surety company would like as much time as they can justify. Plus … [t]hey earn interest on that money before they have to pay it out.
Carroll has a damn good attorney, Roberta Kaplan. Kaplan saw the odd language in the bond.
On Monday, she alerted U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan… And in a sign of just how interested he is, the judge immediately responded in a handwritten note scribbled over her letter to the court.
“The parties shall submit revised documentation promptly,” the judge wrote back.
Both 30-day provisions now read 15 days.
2. How might the bond company be linked to Russia? To Trump?
In a pattern reminiscent of the Trump family, there is a father-son thing happening. However, neither Greenberg supported Trump directly in 2016 or 2020.
Evan Greenberg (Evan), 68/69, is the president and CEO of Chubb Ltd (incorporated in Zürich, Switzerland).
- Federal Insurance Company (FIC), the company behind Trump’s surety bond, is a Chubb subsidiary.
- Evan orchestrated the ACE Insurance absorption of Chubb Insurance in 2016. Details below.
- Evan donated to the Hillary Clinton campaign in the 2016 election cycle, not Trump. However, in 2020, he donated almost exclusively to Republicans, but not Trump.
- Trump appointed Evan to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations in late 2018.
- Although Chubb was one of the first major insurance conglomerates to “adopt limited” restrictions on insuring fossil fuel underwriting, it is one of the largest insurers of oil and gas projects. In 2020, Reuters reported that Chubb was insuring tar sands projects in Canada. In 2021, it withdrew from the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline due to U.S. government sanctions.
Evan’s father is Maurice “Hank” Greenberg (Maurice), 98, the former “combative” chairman and CEO of American International Group (AIG), which was once a subsidiary of Starr Insurance Companies. Starr was founded in 1919 in Shanghai, China, by an American. Maurice has been chairman and chief executive officer of Starr since 1968. (Envision nested Russian dolls.)
Maurice is notorious for extensive fraud that happened at AIG under his direction. He paid $24,000,000 to the SEC (2009) and the state of New York (2017) for fraud that took place before 2005, the year he turned 80 and was kicked out of the CEO penthouse.
Maurice has direct ties to Russian president Vladamir Putin.
- In 2003, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, welcomed Maurice to Moscow. The purpose of the visit? To develop mortgage loans in Russia.
- In 2007, Maurice created a subsidiary, Starr Investments Russia, “to invest hundreds of millions in Russian real estate,” specifically “prime office space, residential housing and hotels.” Putin was the president of Russia.
In the 2016 election cycle, Maurice donated $20,000 to Republican political action committees. According to the Washington Post, he gave more than $15,000,000 to dark money SuperPACs. He supported Jeb Bush. In the 2020 cycle, he supported no presidential candidate directly.
There is no direct link between the surety bond company and Putin. There are links between projects, players, corporations. If FIC asked for 2%, Trump had to pony up only (only!) $18,400,000. Rather than his winning an appeal, I put money on Carroll winning another defamation suit. Who will pay his bills? That’s the national and domestic security issue.
Timelines
AIG timeline:
- In 2006, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged AIG with “improper accounting, bid rigging and practices involving workers’ compensation funds.” AIG paid $1,600,000,000.
- In 2008, the Trump Administration began a bailout deal that “saved what was then the country’s biggest insurer from imminent collapse in the midst of a national housing crisis.”
- In 2009, Obama Administration expanded the bailout, which AIG eventually paid back. It exceeded $182 billion.
Chubb timeline:
- In 2016, ACE Limited, of Switzerland, acquired the Chubb Corp. (founded in 1882) of New Jersey.” In addition, ACE adopted the Chubb name worldwide. “ACE and Chubb are now one, and we could not be more excited about moving forward together with our new colleagues and our new brand,” Evan G. Greenberg said in the company’s news release.
Maurice timeline:
- In 2005, the New York attorney general charged Maurice with “inflating reserves and hiding insurance losses by converting them into investment losses.” The AIG board also removed him from his position as AIG CEO. He subsequently retired from the board of directors.
- In 2009, the SEC charged Maurice with inflating AIG’s finances; AIG was a keystone that fell during the 2008 Great Recession. Maurice “agreed to pay $15 million to settle government allegations that he had cooked the books.”
- Now it’s 2016. The New York civil case took 11 years to come to trial. Welcome to the world of the rich and powerful. The following year, 2017, Maurice admitted to fraud and settled for $9,000,000.
- In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Maurice’s claim that the terms of Great Recession bailout had damaged AIG stockholders. The SCOTUS “left intact a federal appeals court ruling that said Starr, one of AIG’s largest shareholders, doesn’t have the legal right to sue the government.” Maurice was seeking $40,000,000 in damages. His lawyer, David Boies, “argued the government did not compensate A.I.G. shareholders enough for the stake it took, which prevented the collapse of their company.” Maurice began a class action lawsuit seeking stockholder compensation in 2011.
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Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com