Trump’s legal woes come to a head
Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked a New York court to put a $464m fine in a civil fraud case on hold after they were unable to secure the bond needed to postpone it, say Joe Miller and Joshua Chaffin in the Financial Times. Trump was found liable in January for fraudulently inflating the value of real-estate assets in loan applications.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, who brought the case, can collect $464m, with interest, unless Trump posts a bond for the full amount while he appeals. Appeal court judges will decide by 25 March whether the judgment can be paused.
This would be the “best-case scenario” for Trump, who will be eager not to pay roughly 16% of what Trump’s biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, claims is his $2.6bn net worth, says Madeline Halpert on the BBC. The fact that he has assets in New York, including Trump Tower – which James says she is prepared to seize – could “reassure a court that he would be able to pay the penalty if he lost the appeal”.
The development is a reminder of the “deep legal and financial peril that Trump is in”, says John Cassidy in The New Yorker. The $2.6bn figure, if accurate, implies that $464m shouldn’t be “ruinous”, but to obtain such a huge bond, a defendant would have to post liquid assets (cash or securities) as collateral. Most of Trump’s fortune is in the form of illiquid real estate. Trump could take out a mortgage on some of his properties, but they may be “encumbered by existing mortgages”. Given that the Trump Organisation is private, it’s “impossible to know” the “true state of its finances”. Trump has not ruled out filing for bankruptcy, and although this would afford him “temporary protection” from his creditors, it would also seriously damage his reputation before the election. The despair felt by many at the “seeming inability of the legal system to hold Trump to account before November” may be about to end.