On Monday, former president Donald Trump, who is now appealing the ruling that resulted in the enormous debt, will learn how New York State is trying to collect the more than $457 million that he owes in his civil business fraud case.
When Trump requested a legal reprieve from paying the judgment from an appeals court, state Attorney General Letitia James did not attempt to enforce the ruling after she had won it.
The window closes on Monday, but James may choose to give Trump an extension. The likely Republican presidential nominee has been attempting to get out of posting bail for the full amount to delay payment while he files an appeal, but thus far, the courts have rejected his requests.
Democratic congresswoman James threatened to confiscate Trump’s assets if he didn’t have the money to pay the judgment, telling ABC News last month that she was “prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid.”
Her office has since declined to share its plans, and she did not clarify the holdings she was referring to or the specific procedure by which she meant them. In the meanwhile, as a procedural step towards possibly initiating collection proceedings, it has filed notice of the judgment.
Laptops 1000Trump remained silent when a journalist questioned whether he had secured a bond as he arrived on Monday at a different New York court for a separate hearing in his criminal hush money case.
He took to social media earlier on Monday to scream against the civil judgment and the notion that James would seek to enforce it.
The former president said that Democrats were trying to steal his money to starve his campaign for 2024. He framed the matter as a conspiracy theory.
“I planned to run for president with a large portion of those hard-earned funds.” “Electoral interference is something they don’t want me to do,” he stated on his Truth Social page. Calling his holdings “my ‘babies,'” he became enraged at the thought of having to sell them or having them taken.
A common legal remedy for someone who lacks the funds to pay a civil court fine is the seizure of assets. In the case of Trump, possible targets might be things like his apartment at Trump Tower, an airplane, a Wall Street office building, or golf courses.
His bank and financial accounts could be targeted by the attorney general. On Friday, Trump insisted on social media that he has about $500 million in cash, but he plans to spend the majority of it on his presidential campaign.
James and Democratic state judge Arthur Engoron of New York, he has claimed, are trying “to take the cash away so I can’t use it on the campaign.”
James’ office could try to get local police enforcement to confiscate properties and then try to sell them through a legal process. But according to Cardozo School of Law real estate Professor Stewart Sterk, that’s a difficult proposition in Trump’s situation.
“It takes time to find buyers for assets of this size,” he said, adding that “there is very little likelihood that people will be able to bid up to the true value of the property” at a typical auction.
Trump’s debt is the result of a protracted civil trial that lasted several months last fall, during which the state said that he, his business, and key officials greatly exaggerated their wealth on financial documents to deceive bankers and insurers into doing business with him. For years, the claims valued his penthouse, for example, as if it were almost three times larger than it was.
Laptops 1000Trump and his co-defendants disputed any wrongdoing, claiming that the claims were disclaimer-filled, lowballed his wealth, and weren’t accepted at face value by the organizations that provided him with insurance or loans. He explained that the penthouse disparity was just an error made by subordinates.
Taking the attorney general’s side, Engoron made Trump pay $355 million plus daily interest. Several co-defendants were forced to pay significantly smaller sums, including his sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., who are executive vice presidents of the corporation.
The filing of an appeal often does not affect the execution of a judgment under New York law. However, if the individual or organization provides a bond for the amount outstanding, things automatically stop.
The former president can’t do that, according to his attorneys. They indicated real estate would not be accepted as collateral and that underwriters wanted to receive 100% of the judgment. According to Trump’s attorneys, his company needs some cash left over to operate, and doing so would tie up over $557 million in cash, stocks, and other liquid assets.
Trump’s legal team has requested that an appeals court halt collection efforts without a bond being posted. The Attorney General’s Office has voiced opposition.
