'It should vex you': Expert warns of 'national security nightmare' Trump’s bond agreement created
Four days after ex-President Donald Trump posted $91.6 million bond for the second defamation case he lost to veteran journalist E. Jean Carroll, author and Syracuse University College of Law Professor David Cay Johnston is sounding the alarm on the "national security nightmare" of the bond agreement.
In a Tuesday, March 12 MSNBC op-ed, Johnston notes that "the someone Trump owes" for the nearly $1 billion bond is "Chubb, a giant Swiss insurance company that operates in 54 countries. Chubb owns three insurance companies in Russia."
The longtime investigative reporter emphasizes, "I call owing a fortune to anyone, but especially foreign interests that do business in Russia, a national security nightmare."
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He adds, "Having a president deeply in debt to a firm with business interests in Russia could, in myriad ways, compromise American diplomatic, military and national security actions concerning Russia and the countries Putin has said he wants to bring back under the Kremlin’s boot."
Johnston writes:
The framers of our Constitution took care to ensure that presidents would be independent of outside influence, foreign and domestic, through the emoluments clauses, which I teach my students at Syracuse University College of Law. But the Founding Fathers’ concern was with income, not debts, leaving a loophole that if Trump regains office would almost certainly become a national security nightmare.
No one in 1787 imagined that an American president would owe more than a half-billion dollars in damage awards, with more cases pending, to a company with global business interests that in part depend on remaining in the good graces of a dictator like Putin. Even if measured in 1787 currency, this prospect surely would have caused James Madison and the other architects of our Constitution to endure many sleepless nights.
It should vex you, too.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann tweeted Friday that while Trump is "$90M down, $400M to go," the bond agreement details are unclear, and that "the public has no idea who may have actually put up the money or provided a guaranty to support the bond. But one thing’s sure: Trump is beholden to someone for a lot of money."
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Johnston's full op-ed is available at this link.
