https://imgur.com/gallery/97Mc5xl
I don’t understand, also never been arrested/ bonded/arraigned before
In: 5
The US court system has a bond system to guarantee that a person does something (show up in court, pay damages, etc.) Basically, the person gives a lot of money to the court and the court gives the money back when the person does what they are supposed to do.
It’s a financial guarantee they will do it.
However, poor people generally don’t have huge stacks of cash they can give to the court as a guarantee. So, poor people go to a bail company and that company puts up the cash for a fee. But the contract stipulates the bail company can literally hunt you down physically and drag you to court if you don’t do what the court says. The bail company is financially incentived to drag the person back to court so they can get their bail money back. A bail company may deny a person a bond if the bail company feels the person isn’t going to do what the court asks. It’s not worth the cost and effort to drag them back to court.
In this particular case, it seems Trump is appealing his civil rape damages payment. He has already been ordered to pay damages. While he appeals, the court asks him to pay an “appeal bond” which is a cash guarantee that he will pay if he loses his appeal. Rather than going to a bail company, he is just asking to give the court a cash guarantee at an amount slightly larger than the amount of cash he owes the victim. If he fails to show up at appeals court, the court can just give the cash guarantee to the victim and the victim will get paid the amount she is owed. This is fine for the victim (she gets paid if Trump doesn’t show up) and this is better for Trump than using a bail company as he doesn’t have to pay the bail company fee and he doesn’t have to sign a contract saying a bounty hunter can drag him back to court.
I don’t know the details of this particular case but it doesn’t seem Trump was denied anything. His lawyers appear to be requesting an alternative financial guarantee to an appeal bond. The way the letter is written, it appears anyone with enough cash in this situation can request that.
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