What They Are Now

The Republican Party has completely degenerated. They're not good at anything but being assholes and making enemies.

What Did I Tell Ya?

What did I fucking tell you?

Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation

Trump’s social media company went public relying partly on loans from trust managed by person of interest to prosecutors

Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.

The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public.

But Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.

The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.

Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.

The existence of the trust has previously been reported by the Guardian and the Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.

The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions.

The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.

Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.

Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime. In response to an email to Postolnikov seeking comment, a lawyer in Dominica representing Paxum Bank warned of legal action for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.

There is also no indication that Trump or Trump Media had any idea about the nature of the loans beyond that they were opaque, nor has the company or its executives been accused of wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Trump Media did not respond to a request for comment.

After this story was published, a lawyer representing Trump Media said in a statement: “The Guardian continues to propagate its false narrative that TMTG has these fake connections to Russia. It is a hoax. Litigation will continue on this point and we are confident that The Guardian will ultimately be held responsible for its defamation and this story should be retracted.”

But Postolnikov has been under increasing scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger. Most recently, he has been listed on search warrant affidavits alongside several associates – one of whom was indicted last month for money laundering on top of earlier insider-trading charges.

Postolnikov and the trust

In late 2021, Trump Media was facing financial trouble after the original planned merger with Digital World was delayed indefinitely when the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the merger, Trump Media’s since-ousted co-founder-turned-whistleblower Will Wilkerson recounted in an interview.

Part of the problem was that Trump Media struggled to get financing because traditional banks were reluctant to lend millions to Trump’s social media company in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack, Wilkerson said.

Trump Media eventually found some lenders, including ES Family Trust, but the sequence of events was curious.

ES Family Trust was established on 18 May 2021, its creation papers show. Postolnikov’s “user” access to the account was “verified” on 30 November 2021 by a Paxum Bank manager in Dominica. The trust was funded for the first time on 2 December 2021.

Trump Media then received the loans from ES Family Trust: $2m on 23 December 2021, and $6m on 17 February 2022.

The loans came in the form of convertible promissory notes, meaning ES Family Trust would gain a major stake in Trump Media because it was offering the money in exchange for Trump Media agreeing to convert the loan principal into “shares of Company Stock”.

Oddly, the notes were never signed. But the investment in Trump Media proved to be huge: while precise figures can only be known by Trump Media, ES Family Trust’s stake in Trump Media is worth between $20m and $40m even after the sharp decline of the company’s share price in the wake of a poor earnings report.

The ES Family Trust account also appears to have benefited Postolnikov personally. As the criminal investigation into the Trump Media deal intensified towards the end of last year, the trust recorded several transfers to Postolnikov with the subject line “Partial Loan Return”.

In total, the documents showed that the trust transferred $4.8m to Postolnikov’s account, although $3m was inexplicably “reversed”.

(On 17 July 2023, Postolnikov received $300,000. On 17 October 2023, Postolnikov received $1.5m, before it was reversed the next day; later the same day, Postolnikov again received $1.5m, which was also reversed. On 19 October 2023, Postolnikov received the $1.5m for a third and final time.)

The reason for the trust’s creation remains unknown. Aside from the money that went to Trump Media, the trust’s statements show the trust has directly invested money with only two other companies: $10.8m to Eleven Ventures LLC, a venture capital firm, and $1m to Wedbush Securities, a wealth management firm.

The current status of ES Family Trust is also unknown. The trust’s address is listed as a residential home in Hollywood, Florida. But, according to the property website Redfin, the six-bedroom home appears to have been sold in December 2023.

The creation papers also contained something notable: a declaration that, if the original trustee – a Paxum employee named Angel Pacheco – stepped down from the role, his successor would be a certain individual named Michael Shvartsman.

Sprawling money-laundering investigation

Last month, federal prosecutors charged Michael Shvartsman, a close associate of Postolnikov, with money laundering in a superseding indictment after previously charging him and two others in July with insider-trading Digital World shares. Shvartsman and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty.

At least part of the evidence against Shvartsman came from a confidential informant for the DHS, court filings show: in one March 2023 meeting with the informant and an associate, Shvartsman mentioned a friend who owned a bank in Dominica and made bridge loans to Trump Media.

“[Shvartsman] stated that a friend of his owns a bank in the island of Dominica and would be able to provide banking services to Russian and Ukraine Nationals if the [confidential informant] had other clients in need of that service,” the DHS report said.

“[Shvartsman’s associate] told the [confidential informant] that he does not think the SEC would be able to go after [Shvartsman] for his part in the investment but mentioned that [Shvartsman] essentially provided ‘bridge financing’ for the firm behind the Truth Social media platform,” it said.

The unredacted parts of the DHS report do not specify whether the “friend” was Postolnikov and what the “bridge financing” referred to – but the report left open the possibility that Shvartsman also had a role with the trust.

A lawyer for Shvartsman declined to comment on his client’s relationship with Postolnikov. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York also declined to comment.

It is unclear whether federal prosecutors are aware that Trump Media was propped up by Postolnikov via ES Family Trust. At the same time, the money-laundering investigation surrounding the Trump Media merger and the scrutiny on Postolnikov appears to have ballooned in recent months.

The investigation into potential money laundering appears to have started after Wilkerson’s lawyers Phil Brewster, Stephen Bell and Patrick Mincey alerted the US attorney’s office in the southern district of New York to the ES Family Trust loans in October 2022.

Months later, in June 2023, the FBI expanded its investigation to work jointly with the Department of Homeland Security’s El Dorado task force, which specializes in money laundering, and its Illicit Proceeds and Foreign Corruption group, which targets corrupt foreign officials who use US entities to launder illicit funds.

This Is Not A Christian Nation

And - as always - the "Christian Nationalists" are talkin' out their ass.

No - It's Not Strictly Binary

Bowie the lobster is half blue and half orange, half male and half female.

And all natural.

Joe Rogan Is A Bust

There's nobody better at playing the Both Sides Game than Joe Rogan. He's taken it to a whole new level where it's not Left vs Right, or Man vs Woman, or Light vs Dark, or any of that.

Rogan has decided to be Mr Radical Skepticism. He's saying nothing matters because it could all be bullshit, and we all die in the end, and even the universe has an expiration date, so just do whatever the fuck you please - it's like some weird, bizarre, pure form of nihilism (?)

Anyway, Ryan McBeth confirms for us what we've known for a while.

Profit-Taking Is The Norm

Smaller companies - the ones producing about 3% of the industry's revenue - came out with more than half of the new drugs.

While the big dogs - the ones raking in 86% of the revenue - produced only 36% of the new drugs.

Opinion

No, Big Pharma’s high prices don’t drive innovation

This year, for the first time, a handful of prescription drug manufacturers will negotiate with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over how much taxpayers will pay for their costly drugs. Big pharmaceutical companies have long argued that such price negotiations will lower their profits, reducing their ability to innovate. But is that true?

Not according to an analysis we published at our think tank, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. Our research shows that the biggest drug companies largely fail to turn their enormous profits into discoveries. Instead, most innovation is taking place at small, unprofitable start-ups, whose drugs are largely excluded from Medicare’s new price negotiation system. When it comes to pharmaceutical innovation, smaller is better.

For our analysis, we reviewed 428 recent drug approvals by the Food and Drug Administration and surveyed financial data from more than 4,000 pharmaceutical and biotech companies. We found that large companies, defined as those with more than $10 billion in annual sales, produced 86 percent of the industry’s revenue but that only 36 percent of the drugs approved by the FDA. By contrast, emerging start-ups with less than $500 million in annual sales or less than $200 million in annual R&D spending produced 3 percent of the industry’s revenue but discovered more than half of all newly approved drugs.

You’d think that the biggest drug companies with the biggest R&D budgets would have the most productive research labs. But it doesn’t work that way.

Large companies tend to be bureaucratic, risk-averse and much more focused on increasing profits from their existing drug product lines. That’s partly because their largest and most influential shareholders care more about quarterly returns than long-term success. As a result, big companies overinvest in low-quality but “safe” ideas and underinvest in better but risky ones.

By contrast, smaller companies are nimbler and can better attract top scientific talent. The most creative scientists work at start-ups where they often have more freedom. Start-ups also let them generate far more wealth through stock options rather than through modest year-end bonuses at behemoths like Eli Lilly or AstraZeneca.

If large companies’ labs are so unproductive, you might ask, why are so many of the world’s top-selling drugs manufactured by bigger companies? Because of the FDA’s high regulatory costs. Smaller companies can’t always afford to conduct the large billion-dollar clinical trials required for approval. As a result, big companies treat emerging start-ups like their farm team, buying off their best drugs, raising their prices and reaping the profits.

Don't start thinking those high regulatory costs are always just unfortunate happenstance. Sometimes, the big companies lobby extra hard for costly regulation, in order to keep the smaller guys down, and make it easier for themselves to buy properties (eg: drug patents) at a bargain price.

And don't forget the billions in federal government research grants and subsidies funded through NIH.

US Tax Dollars Funded Every New Pharmaceutical in the Last Decade 

The good news is this is beginning to change. Emerging companies are increasingly taking their best drugs to market by themselves. In 2013, only 23 percent of successful drugs developed by emerging companies reached FDA approval under the original developer. By 2022, that share increased to 75 percent. If this trend continues, patients will benefit from a more competitive and diverse ecosystem of drug developers.

Opponents of drug-price negotiation on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley have no problem with large multinationals gobbling up smaller companies. Mergers and acquisitions, they argue, enable investors in those smaller companies to generate quicker returns, incentivizing further investment in start-ups.

But investors also make money if start-ups take their innovations all the way to market. In fact, over the long term, investors can make more money if start-ups become multibillion-dollar success stories rather than selling out at an earlier stage for lower acquisition prices. A more diverse ecosystem of successful, profitable biopharmaceutical companies will lead to more innovation, not less.

The drug negotiation provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act were designed with these considerations in mind. The law exempts from its process any drug representing more than 80 percent of a company’s sales to the Medicare program, effectively excluding emerging start-ups with one FDA-approved medicine.

And more affordable medicines benefit all Americans, not just seniors in Medicare, because all taxpayers fund the program through payroll taxes.

That’s why President Biden has proposed expanding Medicare price negotiations from 20 drugs a year to 50, a reasonable idea that would reduce the federal deficit and Medicare premiums. People often think the only way to make Medicare sustainable is to raise taxes or cut benefits. But reducing what Medicare must pay for the care seniors receive can also help accomplish this goal.

We can do other things to lower drug prices while protecting innovation. First, we can eliminate the Inflation Reduction Act’s punitive tax for companies that refuse to negotiate with the Medicare program. In a true negotiation, manufacturers should have the right to walk away from Medicare. They rarely will, given the value of Medicare’s 65-million-person market, but the right to do so will incentivize Medicare to negotiate in good faith.

Second, we can reduce red tape at the FDA and enable more drugs to reach patients after compelling midstage clinical trials. We already do this for cancer and HIV, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t do it for chronic diseases when scientifically appropriate.

The real barrier to innovation in drug development isn’t manufacturers’ ability to charge extortionate prices; it’s the ever-increasing cost of navigating the FDA’s approval process. In the rest of the economy, innovation drives lower prices for valuable goods and services. The pharmaceutical industry — and its regulator — should follow suit.

Look Up - But Be Careful

April 8, 2024

Eclipse Eye Safety

Except during the brief total phase of a total solar eclipse, when the Moon completely blocks the Sun’s bright face, it is not safe to look directly at the Sun without specialized eye protection for solar viewing.

Viewing any part of the bright Sun through a camera lens, binoculars, or a telescope without a special-purpose solar filter secured over the front of the optics will instantly cause severe eye injury.

Eye Safety for Partial and Annular Solar Eclipses

Partial or annular solar eclipses are different from total solar eclipses – there is no period of totality when the Moon completely blocks the Sun's bright face. Therefore, during partial or annular solar eclipses, it is never safe to look directly at the eclipse without proper eye protection.

When watching a partial or annular solar eclipse directly with your eyes, you must look through safe solar viewing glasses (“eclipse glasses”) or a safe handheld solar viewer at all times. Eclipse glasses are NOT regular sunglasses; regular sunglasses, no matter how dark, are not safe for viewing the Sun. Safe solar viewers are thousands of times darker and ought to comply with the ISO 12312-2 international standard. NASA does not approve any particular brand of solar viewers.

Always inspect your eclipse glasses or handheld viewer before use; if torn, scratched, or otherwise damaged, discard the device. Always supervise children using solar viewers.

Do NOT look at the Sun through a camera lens, telescope, binoculars, or any other optical device while wearing eclipse glasses or using a handheld solar viewer — the concentrated solar rays will burn through the filter and cause serious eye injury.

If you don’t have eclipse glasses or a handheld solar viewer, you can use an indirect viewing method, which does not involve looking directly at the Sun. One way is to use a pinhole projector, which has a small opening (for example, a hole punched in an index card) and projects an image of the Sun onto a nearby surface. With the Sun at your back, you can then safely view the projected image. Do NOT look at the Sun through the pinhole!

Viewed thru a kitchen colander

You can make your own eclipse projector using a cardboard box, a white sheet of paper, tape, scissors, and aluminum foil. With the Sun behind you, sunlight will stream through a pinhole punched into aluminum foil taped over a hole in one side of the box.

During the partial phases of a solar eclipse, this will project a crescent Sun onto a white sheet of paper taped to the inside of the box. Look into the box through another hole cut into the box to see the projected image.

An illustration shows the silhouette of a person looking into a rectangular box through a hole cut into the end of a box. The Sun appears behind the person. Sunlight streams into the box through a small hole punched into a piece of aluminum foil taped over the Sun-facing end of the box, to the person's left, projecting a crescent Sun onto a white sheet of paper taped to the inside of the box.

An eclipse projector is an easy and safe way to view the eclipsed Sun.

Do NOT use eclipse glasses or handheld viewers with cameras, binoculars, or telescopes. Those require different types of solar filters. When viewing a partial or annular eclipse through cameras, binoculars, or telescopes equipped with proper solar filters, you do not need to wear eclipse glasses. (The solar filters do the same job as the eclipse glasses to protect your eyes.)

Seek expert advice from an astronomer before using a solar filter with a camera, telescope, binoculars, or any other optical device. Note that solar filters must be attached to the front of any telescope, binoculars, camera lens, or other optics.

Eye Safety for Total Solar Eclipses

Here are some important safety guidelines to follow during a total solar eclipse.

• View the Sun through eclipse glasses or a handheld solar viewer during the partial eclipse phases before and after totality.
• You can view the eclipse directly without proper eye protection only when the Moon completely obscures the Sun’s bright face – during the brief and spectacular period known as totality. (You’ll know it’s safe when you can no longer see any part of the Sun through eclipse glasses or a solar viewer.)
• As soon as you see even a little bit of the bright Sun reappear after totality, immediately put your eclipse glasses back on or use a handheld solar viewer to look at the Sun.

Skin Safety

Even during a partial or annular eclipse, or during the partial phases of a total eclipse, the Sun will still be very bright. If you are watching an entire eclipse, you may be in direct sunlight for hours. Remember to wear sunscreen, a hat, and protective clothing to prevent skin damage.

Investment?

Somebody please explain to me how this whole Truth Social stock thing isn't just another way to launder Russian mob money.

I spent 24 hours on Trump's Truth Social so you don't have to. No wonder it's tanking

You've likely heard of former President Donald Trump's mouthpiece and social media platform, Truth Social. You may have seen headlines that its stock shocked Wall Street with its much-hyped initial public offering. Or that in the week since, it has been hemorrhaging value as investors get a real sense of the company's worth.

But how many of us know what Truth Social is really like? Judging by the platform's relatively low number of active users, I'm guessing it's still a mystery to many Americans. So I joined Truth Social, selflessly going there so you don't have to.

Twenty-four hours of scrolling through posts from "Truthsayers" on the two-year-old platform explained why the site is tanking. In short, partisan echo chambers are stale, musty spaces that lack the sort of oppositional views needed to make social media tick. Truth Social feels like a MAGA town hall in a ventless conference room, where an endless line of folks step up to the mic to share how the world is out to get them.

The Truth Social feed I experienced was a mix of swaggering gun talk, typo-filled Bible scripture, violent Biden bashing, nonsensical conspiracy theories and more misguided memes about Jan. 6 “hostages," trans satanists and murderous migrants than anyone should be subjected to in one day. Or ever.

What I didn't see were the anodyne news posts that populate other social platforms, pushback against absurd misinformation about "tsunamis of death for the highly vaccinated!" or ads for much that wasn't Trump-branded, Trump-adjacent or sold by My Pillow.

Social media has always been a playground for our worst instincts, but here, the madness and misinformation goes largely uncontested because who else but a Trump fan and a columnist forced to write about this stuff would volunteer to wade through such a trash heap? Apparently not enough folks to bring in substantial revenue, according to a recent disclosure that the company had made a mere $4.1 million in revenue in 2023 on losses of more than $58 million — quickly deflating investor enthusiasm and shaving some $4 billion from the company's valuation in the days since its IPO.

There was little conversation about the platform's stock plummet, but there was plenty of chatter about a supposed trans takeover, alleged Dem voter fraud, President Biden purportedly sniffing a baby repeatedly during Sunday’s White House Easter egg hunt and a pointless poll from the Daily Mail showing that Trump would beat Michelle Obama if a hypothetical presidential election were held today.

Trump’s own posts from his @realDonaldTrump account (6.91 million followers) are the backbone of the Truth Social experience, and illustrate what really sets it apart from other social media outlets.

This site has a star, and he garners far more adulation than heat. Thousands of users liked and "ReTruthed" his boasts about a presidential endorsement from Hungarian leader and strongman Viktor Orban, his complaints about the latest gag order from a judge presiding over one of his many court cases and his link to a Newsweek story about Trump sneakers reselling on EBay for $450,000.

His posts are a mix of loud, Trumpian ALL-CAPS warnings — "UNDER CROOKED JOE BIDEN WE HAVE BECOME A THIRD WORLD NATION"— and run-on, word-salad grievances: "I’ve just posted a 175 Million Dollar Bond with the sadly failing and very troubled State of New York, based on a Corrupt Judge and Attorney General who used a Statute that was never used for this before, where no Jury was allowed, my financial statements were conservative and had a 100% perfect caution/non-reliance clause, there were no victims (except me!), there was no crime or damage, there was only success and HAPPY BANKS."

To sign up for a Truth Social account, one must consent to receive text “updates” from the platform, and that Google Voice number designed to receive all your trash-bin spam calls and texts won’t work (I tried). Next up is choosing a username. The example given is “LibertyForAll.” Needless to say that handle was unavailable, as was “LibertyForAli.” Once in, it suggested accounts to follow such as Trump, conservative news outlets the Daily Wire and Breitbart, country singer John Rich and right-wing troll @Catturd. I did, and today, I am no smarter for doing so.

Social media is in essence a brain drain between sporadic bursts of breaking news and fresh commentary. And even though X, né Twitter, has decayed under the leadership of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, it's is still the closest thing our fractious online society has to a town square. Threads, Facebook's attempt to eat Twitter's lunch, still hasn't come close to generating enough heat to make it anything more than a placid space where nothing much seems to happen.

Truth Social launched in February 2022 after Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He has since been reinstated on both platforms, though he prefers to truth rather than tweet on his own platform, which is still a relatively small operation. Recent estimates from Similarweb show Truth Social has roughly 5 million active monthly users, compared to X’s estimated 368 million monthly users or Facebook’s 2.9 billion. The smaller number of users translates to a rather sleepy scrolling experience.

Advertisers also like lots of users, and the platform's ads — or lack thereof — are indicative of the challenges Truth Social has faced in finding companies willing to spend on Trump's platform. A majority of ads, labeled “Sponsored Truth,” are for Trump-branded merchandise: a 2024 Save America “gold” card, a "California for Trump" hat, an American flag embossed with more MAGA jargon.

Many of the retailers who buy space on the platform appeal to MAGA voters with Fox News-like candor. "Liberals Will Hate to See This!" boasts one ad for a "Love Like Jesus" hoodie. But as Monday's financial disclosure showed, that niche market might not be enough to put the company in the black.

To be fair, a Wall Street valuation isn't necessarily the only indicator of a product’s worth in the real world, that place where humans with tangible money and staggering debt actually handle the merchandise and use the service. And many tech companies surge after going public as retail investors buy the hype, then take a haircut as interest fades

Regardless, the volatile stock market story is about the most exciting aspect of Truth Social. Otherwise, it's a journey into the predictable, punctuated by ALL CAPS.

Today's Short

So, when Trump says he may decide to send a cruise missile or two into Mexico to blast some random drug cartel thing, is he telling us he intends to use the US military as his personal muscle to force the cartels to pay him tribute?

Do you think it's out of the question? Cuz, gee whiz, he's just not that kinda guy?

It's The Money, Stupid

Headline Translated:

Billionaire demonstrates next level usury

And does this not pose a threat by way of furthering Trump's graft?

How long before we decide coin-operated politicians need to be driven out, and not molly-coddled?

How a California billionaire known for auto loans provided Trump’s bond

Don Hankey, who made a fortune offering high-interest auto loans to customers with poor credit, said providing the $175 million bond to Trump is a good business deal

As former president Donald Trump struggled last month to post a bond for more than $450 million to keep authorities from seizing his properties, California billionaire Don Hankey and his wife, Debbi, started discussing a solution: Hankey’s business could cover it.

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Hankey, a Trump supporter who made a fortune providing high-interest auto loans to customers with poor credit, soon reached out to Trump’s team to negotiate a deal that would allow Trump to stay the penalty while he appealed a massive New York civil fraud judgment. But when a court reduced the bond to $175 million last week and Trump said he had the cash to post it himself, the matter seemed moot, Hankey told The Washington Post.

Then, to his surprise, the Trump team last week revived the talks and asked Hankey if he would back the new amount. Hankey promptly agreed. He said that his company is charging Trump a “modest fee,” which he declined to disclose, and that the arrangement allowed Trump to hold onto his money, adding, “At least he’s getting interest on his collateral.”

With the bond, which Trump posted Monday, Hankey appears to have facilitated a final step in Trump’s narrow escape from a cash crunch that a few weeks ago had the New York attorney general vowing to come after his assets and experts wondering if he would have to file for bankruptcy as he faced more than half a billion dollars in penalties from two civil cases, with only weeks to find the money.

The financial boost for the presumed GOP nominee has thrust Hankey into the midst of a presidential campaign, bringing a new national profile to a colorful 80-year-old worth $7.4 billion, according to Forbes, who worked his way from car salesman to major player in the car loan industry and owner of Xanadu, formerly Olivia Newton-John’s Malibu estate. If Trump is elected, their relationship could come under new scrutiny if the government is involved in matters affecting Hankey’s business.

Hankey said the bond, which was provided by one of his companies, a subsidiary of Knight Insurance, was a good business deal, not a political statement.

“I’m chairman of the board of several companies, and we just carry on our business and we try to stay away from political issues or taking sides,” said Hankey, who said he has been a Trump supporter “and I will support him in the future, but I wouldn’t consider myself a major supporter.” He said that while many of his contributions have gone to Republicans, he has also donated to Democrats.

Hankey also said he provided the bond to Trump in part because he agreed with the former president’s defense in the New York civil case, in which he was convicted of committing fraud by overvaluing his assets and getting loans at lower rates than otherwise would have been available. Trump argued that even if the property values were overstated, it was a common practice and that the loans were repaid in full.

Hankey said that one of his businesses, Westlake Financial Services, provides loans to 1.5 million customers and that “quite often, when credit statements or financial statements are submitted to us, the values are exaggerated on some of the assets. … I would say it probably happens on 75 percent of our applications.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment, referring instead to a post by the former president on his social network, Truth Social, in which he said, “I had to pay New York State in order to appeal a corrupt decision by a biased, crooked and highly overturned judge.”

Hankey is also the largest individual, non-institutional shareholder of Axos Bank, a little-known online company that in 2022 provided $225 million in crucial loans to keep Trump’s businesses afloat after many of his longtime lenders cut ties in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Hankey said he was unaware of the Axos loans until after they were provided to the Trump Organization. Axos’s president and chief executive previously told The Post he approved the loans because they were profitable for his bank, not for political reasons.

While not as well-known nationally as some other billionaires who support Trump, Hankey is a prominent figure in California, where his best-known business has revolved around providing high-interest auto loans to customers with poor credit. Remembering how he once had to turn away such customers when he was a car salesman, he said, he established a business that provided loans to higher-risk customers at higher rates.

A 2015 article in Forbes magazine described Hankey calculating how he might provide a hypothetical customer with a low credit score a loan at 23.99 percent. The article said that his company at the time had 336,000 outstanding car loans from 23,000 auto dealerships, and that his company repossessed 250 cars per day because of problems with repayment.

While the business provided financing to many customers who couldn’t get it elsewhere, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that it sometimes went too far.

The agency on Oct. 1, 2015, announced that it had ordered Westlake Financial Services and another company, Wilshire Consumer Credit, to provide $44.1 million in relief to customers and to pay a civil penalty of $4.25 million for what the agency called “illegal debt collection tactics.” The news release did not name Hankey, and he was not accused of wrongdoing. Hankey said in the interview that the companies relied on an “electronic program” and that he didn’t think they did anything wrong.

In the bank case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled in February that Trump, several of his companies, his two elder sons and former executives were civilly liable for fraud by lying about the true value of his assets to obtain better rates.

Attorneys for the Trump Organization and family have argued that the company was engaged in normal business practices and that the judge’s financial penalty was wildly excessive and ought to be waived or reduced.

After Engoron’s ruling, Trump moved to appeal — but first needed to either post a bond of more than $450 million to stay the financial penalty, or pay it. Weeks later, Trump’s attorneys told the court that he couldn’t do so after approaching 30 surety companies.

But the Hankeys had already begun discussing a potential deal. Hankey said his wife, Debbi, first suggested providing the bond, and then contacted a friend who knew the campaign and connected them with Hankey.

A round of negotiations soon commenced, but last week, an appeals court panel in New York ruled that Trump needed to post only $175 million to appeal.

“We thought our negotiations were finished,” Hankey said. “And we were thanked by the Trump Organization.”

But Trump’s company soon reached out again. “They called back and asked us if we would put up the bond for $175 million,” he said.

It took only a few days to complete the new deal.

By posting the $175 million bond Monday, Trump appeared — at least for now — to escape from a financial jam that weeks ago appeared so untenable that experts wondered if he would file for corporate bankruptcy.

Instead, he has gained stays in the two most daunting civil cases against him without having to forfeit any of his assets or sell any of his properties. Nor did he have to touch stock he has in his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., a stake that was still valued at around $4 billion Tuesday afternoon despite the stock price’s recent slide.

Nonetheless, depending on how the appeals process plays out, Trump still may face substantial judgments in the bank case as well as in an unrelated defamation case, in which an insurance company posted a $91 million bond.

By using the bonds and the appeals process, Trump has given himself additional chances to argue his position in court, in front of different judges, and — perhaps most important — gained more time to pay any penalties that are ultimately levied upon him.

Robert E. Malchman, a longtime New York lawyer who has been following the bank case, said that the appellate court’s decision to reduce the bond amount had given Trump a lifeline and that James will probably now have to press her case well after the election through the appeals process.

Trump still may face the full penalties, Malchman said, even if he returns to the White House.

“He can be president of the United States again, but that’s not going to affect his civil judgments,” he said.

He said Trump remains under the purview of a court monitor, former judge Barbara S. Jones, who must approve major financial transactions by the Trump Organization. And he can no longer use the money he has provided as collateral for the bond for other purposes, which could strap him financially. “That’s $175 million that you can’t use for anything else,” Malchman said.

Hankey said he has never spoken to Trump. But after the bond deal was made public, he heard from one of Trump’s sons, who effectively runs the company.

“I talked to Eric Trump this morning,” Hankey said. “He called and thanked us for posting the bond.”