Trump’s dangerous $600 million problem
By Frida Ghitis
When former President Donald Trump’s lawyers informed the court on Monday that their famously wealthy client faces “insurmountable difficulties” in raising cash for a bond to cover the massive judgment against him in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case, Trump critics may have felt some satisfaction. Facing close to $600 million in legal judgments, Trump, who has spent decades bragging about his wealth, is facing a financial crisis.To his critics, the thinking is that any obstacle in Trump’s path puts him further from the presidency and so, makes the country safer. In this case, however, the opposite may be true.
The former, and perhaps future, president looks like he is on the financial ropes, and that makes him potentially even more dangerous. He urgently needs cash – lest he be forced to give up some of his trophy properties to satisfy the courts. That pressing need could make him vulnerable to anyone offering to help him out of his troubles, including America’s enemies and rivals.
It was Trump himself who highlighted the governing conflicts that could emanate from depending on other people’s money. Boasting, as he always has, of being fabulously rich, he told the 2016 voters that his campaign, unlike that of his rival, was completely self-funded. That wasn’t true, of course, but his argument was actually correct. Nobody would control him, he claimed, because those who give you money expect something in return. “I don’t need anybody’s money,” Trump said in his June 2015 presidential campaign announcement.
Now Trump needs money, a lot of it. What would his creditors or benefactors want in return? It was already noteworthy that Trump made a 180-degree reversal regarding the TikTok platform not long after meeting with one of the platform’s wealthy stakeholders at his Mar-a-Lago estate. He had vowed to ban the app in the US for national security reasons when he was president. Now, with Congress moving to force TikTok out of China’s control, he has suddenly switched camps.
Alarm bells started going off as soon as Trump’s bond predicament became public. Illinois Democratic Rep. Sean Casten posted on X, “The presumptive @GOP nominee for President is desperate for $464M (and counting),” saying that makes him a “massive national security risk; any foreign adversary seeking to buy a President knows the price.”As a reminder, a New York judge last month found Trump liable for fraudulently manipulating the value of his properties, ruling that his “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on the pathological,” and slapped him with a $450 million penalty, plus interest. Separately, Trump was ordered to pay more than $80 million to E. Jean Carrol in January after a jury concluded he defamed her when he denied he had sexually assaulted her. (Trump denies all wrongdoing).In addition to nearly half a billion dollars in judgements, Trump faces massive legal fees over multiple civil and criminal cases, and his presidential campaign funds, drained after funding his personal legal costs, are badly lagging behind President Joe Biden’s massive war chest.Anyone who thinks America’s foes are not paying attention to what could become an entry gate for a Trojan Horse is suffering from wishful thinking.Incredibly, the former president wants to bring back to his campaign none other than the disgraced, Russian-linked, formerly imprisoned operative Paul Manafort, his 2016 campaign chairman. Even without Trump’s financial troubles this would raise all manner of red flags, especially concerning Russia.
Manafort had a track record of working for dictators around the world before he met Trump. After his stint with the 2016 Trump campaign, he was sentenced for financial crimes and served time in prison before Trump pardoned him.
He had already received tens of millions from Russian oligarchs and pro-Kremlin Ukrainians when he approached the Trump campaign and, oddly, offered to work for free. Representing Trump at the 2016 Republican convention, he reportedly had the GOP platform scrap a plan supporting Ukraine, then already besieged by Russia. It was a startling reversal for the party.