A new report from California nonpartisan group Cal Matters finds that President Donald Trump has no legal authority to scrap cashless bail as he campaigned on, despite signing two executive orders to do so in August.
While one order pertains to Washington D.C., the other, reports Cal Matters, "supposedly covers every other U.S. jurisdiction — thousands of them — where people are accused of crimes and arrested."
Trump gave his staff 30 days to submit the list of those jurisdictions (which Cal Matters noted "we've now passed") but there's a bigger problem on the issue of cashless bail, according to the report.
"Trump has no authority to butt into any of this. But he’s butting in anyway, by threatening to withhold federal funding unless states and local jurisdictions that have taken cash bail off the table reinstate it," writes Cal Matters' Robert Greene.
Greene also says that Trump's basic premise is "demonstrably false," and "appears to be that money and the fear of losing it will make potentially dangerous people alter their behavior."
To back up his claims, the president cited a report in Yolo County, California that's been criticized for its methodology. Greene noted that study found "no evidence that putting up money as a condition of release has any effect on pretrial behavior."
"But proponents of money bail have made sure that it’s the faulty Yolo report, and not the peer-reviewed data and studies, that makes it to the desks of news editors. And, apparently, the White House," he wrote.
"Most people released on bail — like Trump in Fulton County, Georgia in 2023 — never actually pay bail," Greene explains, pointing out that defendant typically pay a nonrefundable 10 percent fee to a bail bondsman. "If Trump’s racketeering trial were to go forward, there would be nothing he could do — no number of court appearances, no agreements to stop saying nasty things on social media or anything else — that would get him his $20,000 fee back."
Contrary to Trump's own premise, "As with any other defendant who paid a private bond agent, there was no monetary incentive that would have affected his behavior before trial," Greene notes.
Had the president paid the $200,000 in full, he says, he'd have gotten it all back after trial.
"Does a defendant who paid the full bail or a fee to a bail bond agent have a monetary incentive not to be arrested for another crime? The crux of the Trump bail order is that the presumed answer is 'yes' — but the actual answer is 'no,' Greene says. "Unlike failure to appear, being arrested does not result in a defendant losing bail money."
With the exception of Illinois, which completely got rid of cash bail, Greene says, "Americans continue to enjoy many of their constitutional rights only in proportion to how much money they have."
"Defendants with a lot of money can post a lot of cash but get it all back at the end of trial. Those with just a little cash must pay a nonrefundable bail bond agent fee, and those with no money go to jail," he explains, asking, "So why does Trump want this?"
"It may be because, like most Americans, he is clueless about how bail works," he says. "Or it could be because, like many police and prosecutors, he believes the justice system taught in school is just a fairy tale. . . Or he could be planning to lock up people just for protesting . . .Or it could be that he just considers bail reform to be 'woke,' and therefore something to wreck."