By Koh Gui Qing
NEW YORK, April 5 (Reuters) – Don Hankey, the billionaire businessman whose company Knight Specialty Insurance provided the $175 million bond posted by Donald Trump in his civil fraud case in New York, said told Reuters that the fees charged by his company to the former US president were low.
Hankey, who supported Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016 and has said he supports his re-election, argued that providing the bond was a business decision. He declined to disclose the fees, but said they were low because Knight didn’t think it carried much risk.
Lawyers say bail bond companies typically charge a fee of between 1% and 2% of the face value of the bond.
Hankey said he now believes Knight did not sufficiently charge Trump because of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ subsequent review of bail, as well as the media attention surrounding it.
“We thought it would be a simple procedure that wouldn’t involve any other legal issues and it didn’t turn out that way. We probably didn’t charge enough,” Hankey said in an interview.
“We’ve gotten a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls. Maybe that’s part of the reason he’s had problems with other insurance companies,” Hankey said, adding that despite the problems , he did not regret having provided the deposit.
Trump posted the $175 million bond on April 1 as he appeals a $454 million fraud judgment against him for overstating his net worth and the value of his real estate in order to dupe banks and insurers, in a case brought by James.
On Thursday, James’ office questioned the $175 million bond, asking Knight to provide proof that he has enough assets to pay if Trump’s appeal fails. A New York judge will hold a hearing on the case on April 22.
Hankey, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $7.4 billion, said he was surprised by James’ questioning of the bond. “I am surprised that they are coming after our obligation more harshly or looking for reasons to cause problems with our instrument,” he said.
Hankey, who runs a group of companies including a subprime auto loan provider that has been reprimanded by regulators for predatory behavior involving customers, said Trump offered a guarantee for the $175 million in cash.
He said the money was held at a brokerage firm and promised to Knight, and that Knight could access it if necessary.
“I don’t know if it came from Donald Trump or Donald Trump and his supporters,” Hankey said of the money Trump provided as collateral.
Hankey said he first contacted Trump’s representatives to discuss how he could help Trump with the bail, before the former president managed to reduce it on appeal from $454 million to $175 million of dollars. Trump should have “provided a lot of assurances, or someone else would have done it,” Hankey said.
Hankey said he understood from Trump representatives that Trump did not have $454 million in cash.
Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social last month that he had “nearly five hundred million dollars in cash.” In an April 2023 deposition to James, he said he had “substantially over $400 million in cash.”
A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Koh Gui Qing in New York; editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Bill Berkrot)
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