The little-known insurance company that rescued Donald Trump by providing a last-minute $175 million bank fraud bond isn’t just unlicensed in New York; it hasn’t even been vetted by a voluntary state entity that would verify it meets minimum “eligibility standards” to prove financial stability.

Perhaps even more troubling, the legal document from Knight Specialty Insurance Company doesn’t actually promise it will pay the money if the former president loses his $464 million bank fraud case on appeal. Instead, it says Trump will pay, negating the whole point of an insurance company guarantee, according to three legal and bond experts who reviewed the contract for The Daily Beast.

“This is not common… the only reason this would be done is to limit the liability to the surety,” said N. Alex Hanley, an expert in how companies appeal enormous judgments.

These two points, noted here for the first time, validate the New York attorney general’s concerns that Trump is trying to avoid a financial punishment that could be catastrophic to his riches and reputation.

“There are many questions here, and that short piece of paper gives very little comfort,” said Maria T. Vullo, who was formerly New York’s top financial regulator.

“I believe this paper isn’t worth much and there are more shenanigans behind it,” said one former regulator, who’s intimately familiar with industry norms but spoke only on condition of anonymity.

After a three-month trial ended with a state judge concluding that Trump committed bank fraud for a decade by lying about his wealth and property values, the real estate tycoon and his top executives were ordered to pay $464 million—a massive sum that increases every day with interest that dates back years. But unable to find a large and trusted surety company to provide the half-billion-dollar bond that would legally halt AG Letitia James from seizing his properties, Trump convinced an appellate court to lower that sum to $175 million.

He then opted for an insurance company in California that’s tied to Don Hankey Jr., a billionaire MAGA supporter who’s built a nasty reputation by dealing in subprime auto loans that have resulted in numerous complaints about predatory business practices—like illegally repossessing the cars of American soldiers.

On Thursday, The Daily Beast noted how the Knight Specialty Insurance Company isn’t licensed by New York’s Department of........

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