TRUMP NOT AS RICH AS CLAIMED

Poor widdle Donnie-boy. He’s not as rich as the Trube Believers believe. What a surprise!

This morning, his lawyers informed the New York Court that Trump was unable to secure a roughly half-billion dollar bond in order to appeal his civil fraud case. This means Attorney General Letitia James could seek to freeze bank accounts and seize his marquee properties.

The filing, made a week before the bond is due, suggests Trump might soon face a financial crisis unless an appeals court comes to his rescue. His request that the appeals court pause the $454 million judgment, or accept a bond of only $100 million is really unlikely, since it would fly in the face of every other fraud case ever brought in New York. And if that doesn’t work, he already foreclosed going to the federal courts in this case himself back at the outset.

Trump’s lawyers called obtaining a bond in this amount a “practical impossibility” despite “diligent efforts.” According to the filing, Trump has been turned down repeatedly after approaching about 30 companies that provide appeal bonds, encountering “insurmountable difficulties.”

For a company to promise to cover the judgment if Trump lost the appeal and failed to pay, he would have to pledge acceptable collateral and pay the company a fee as high as 3 percent of the bond. The significant problem is that Trump does not have the liquidity to obtain such a bond sine ‘acceptable collateral” for a bond this big, would require that Trump pledge more than $550 million in cash, stocks and bonds - liquid assets, which he simply does not have. Ttump’s net worth is derived largely from the value of his real estate holdings. Bond companies rarely accept real estate as collateral. The $350 million in cash that a recent New York Times analysis found in his assets, is far short of what’s needed.

And he might have to post an appeal bond worth possibly above $500 million, to reflect the interest he will owe, in order to prevent asset seizure on March 25. (If he can’t go to trial in the Stormy Daniels case on March 25, watching him lose Trump Tower would be an acceptable alternative to me.)

New York Attorney General Ms. James could have moved to collect as soon as Judge Engoron made his final ruling, but instead offered a 30-day grace period, due on March 25. Trump could also seek to appeal to New York’s highest court; it is unclear whether the AG’s office will hold off on the seizure while he pursues that.

The deadline could not come at a worse time for Trump, who only last week finalized a $91.6 million bond in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, which he promptly put at risk of a third defamation suit when he proceeded at two public events that weekend to repeat each of the statement he was found guilty of in the recently-lost defamation suit.

Trump obtained that bond from Chubb Insurance, in which he pledged an investment account at Charles Schwab as collateral, likely for more than $100 million in cash and stocks and bonds that he could sell in a hurry. Assets no longer available for him to use as collateral in the civil fraud case.

I have visions of Trump Tower coming down in one of those slo-mo dynamitings where it collapses in on itself. With the wreckage left as a memorial to the worst person to ever exist in this country.

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