Unless you’ve been living under a Trump-repellant rock, you likely know that Donald Trump has spent his entire adult life bragging about how rich he is. “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich,” he said in 2011. “I’m really rich,” he declared while announcing his first run for the White House in 2015. “I have total net worth of $8.73 billion,“ he claimed at the time. Of course, another thing you probably know about Trump is that he’s a pathological liar—and this week, his lies about his wealth ran headfirst into reality.
On Monday, the ex-president’s attorneys told an appellate court that he can’t find a company willing to give him a bond to cover the $464 million judgment rendered against him (and the Trump Organization and his adult sons) in a civil fraud case that, ironically, found him liable for inflating his net worth. In their filing, Trump’s legal team said that “ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is a ‘practical impossibility’,” adding that Team Trump has approached “about 30 surety companies through 4 separate brokers.” According to the lawyers, the only bond companies that will even entertain the possibility of covering a judgment of more than $464 million will not accept real estate as collateral and “will only accept cash or cash equivalents.” Making matters worse, Trump’s lawyers said, these companies typically “require collateral of approximately 120% of the amount of the judgment,” which “‘would require Defendants to hand over collateral in the form of cash or cash equivalents of approximately’ $557 million.”
But wait, one might say: If Trump is as rich as he says he is, and his business is as successful as he has long claimed, coming up with $557 million should be no problem. But, of course, Trump isn’t as rich as he claims to be. As of last year, he was reportedly worth $2.6 billion—which is a lot richer than your average American, but nowhere near what he has bragged and definitely not enough to put up more than half a billion in cash. In an affidavit included in the filing, Gary Giulietti, who helped the Trump Organization reach out to bond companies, said: “While it is my understanding that the Trump Organization is in a strong liquidity position, it does not have $1 billion in cash or cash equivalents.”
Not surprisingly, Trump threw a shit fit about all of this on Truth Social on Monday, raging “Judge [Arthur] Engoron actually wants me to put up Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for the Right to Appeal his ridiculous decision. In other words, he is trying to take my Appellate Rights away from me when I have already won at the Appellate Division, but he refuses to accept their already made decision.” (As Rolling Stone notes, “appeal security bonds are a common practice in civil courts throughout the country” and “the bond essentially guarantees that the individual would be able to pay the amount owed should they lose their appeal, and helps prevent individuals from indefinitely skirting penalties by delaying the enforcement of an order through the appeals process.”)
A full appellate court panel will soon hear Trump’s request for a stay of enforcement on the civil penalty after an emergency appeals judge rejected the plea. New York attorney general Letitia James already gave the ex-president a 30-day grace period to put up the bond, and if she doesn’t extend it, come March 25, she could start seizing his assets. As she said in February, “I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day,” referring to the downtown Trump-owned building.
Nothing to see here, just Jared Kushner openly fantasizing about Israel getting rid of everyone in Gaza to build valuable “waterfront property”
Perhaps he’ll get to work on this initiative as secretary of state. Per the Guardian: