This is the only thing I’m referring to, is the legal maneuvers they are attempting. Doing “everything they can” is probably the same as saying they’re doing nothing. Yeah, I’m sure it’s a mess from the financial end, but I also hope that New York already has a handle on things somewhat as a result of their investigations. It’s not like they’re just now starting to look into who owns what under what name, you’d think that has been integral into getting this case started in the first place.
True, but also presumably the same holds for most corrupt rich people who are the subject of this kind of court order. They have a lot of practice at unraveling this kind of thing efficiently (and also I’d assume having a big hotel with your name on it makes it quite hard to claim “nahh, you can’t seize this, this is nothing to do with me this is a jointly owned asset of Onlad Umprt Inc and Tuuumrup Ltd.”)
Can they though? Unlike the Georgia case (where the trial hasn’t even started) this case is over, they lost. Is there even a mechanism for appealing leins and such?
RE: Mar a Lago–can NY seize assets in another state? The one time I contemplated filing a suit I was told if the defendant didn’t have real assets in CO I was out of luck.
I think so. There are probably a few procedural hoops to jump through, but for this kind of money, it’s worth it.
I highly doubt it and I can’t imagine that the FL authorities will be helpful
Here’s an article from Forbes on Trump’s Net Worth. (Might be paywalled – looks like you get only a handful of free articles.)
The article says that Trump has $690 million net in New York real estate. Not all of this would be easily converted to cash, but some would. For example, Trump owns 17 condos and a portion of retail worth a total of $101 million in Trump Park Avenue. I wold think that the condo portion of that could be available to James in a relatively short period of time.
James has a kind of fiduciary responsibility to get how much the property is worth. I mean, she can’t sell one of those Park Avenue condos to her brother-in-law for $100k. But she doesn’t have Trump’s connections. Maybe Trump can unload those condos to one of his Saudi pals for $200 million. From that perspective, it’s worth it to him to liquidate the properties himself.
It can be done, you can even potentially collect from a foreign country, although of course there needs to be cooperation. That’s generally referred to as “enforcement of foreign judgement”.
Here is a web site talking about the process of “domesticating a foreign judgement” in Florida.
And as Procrustus stated:
I agree. I’m sure Forbes does reasonable due diligence, but they’re not conducting full, independent audits. At a certain point, they likely say, “That’s close enough.”
And if that’s true, it’s also likely that a full audit would show Trump has something south of $2.6B. “John Barron” works it as hard as he can, and Forbes finally says, “Fine, tell him we’re not reporting $4B, but we’ll go as high as $2.6B. Maybe that’ll shut him up.”
The idea of bankruptcy has been floated in this thread - but wouldn’t that open himself up to criminal perjury based on his testimony that he had x amount of cash available, etc?
Not necessarily… He could have spent it. Or even if he has it, his debts exceed it.
I’d think so, otherwise funds would be transferred to out-of-state banks, real assets (e.g., jewels) could be shipped elsewhere, etc. Trump owes cash. Where the cash comes from is a separate matter.
I’m thinking that some of Trumps highly leveraged properties in NYC could easily be liquidated by offering the creditors his remaining pieces of the properties at fair maket value. No need to actually sell off the entire property. This could happen fairly quickly if its allowed under NY law.
The other thing to keep in mind is there is already (and has been for over a year) a court appointed fiduciary watchdog, retired federal judge Barbara Jones. She has access to everything that Trump has that’s registered by Trump org and its subsidiaries to do business in New York. the AG made sure to put him in a straight jacket at the start of the case. It’s going to be virtually impossible to get anything hinky past this highly experienced monitor.
Is it within her remit to help with the process of seizing assets in order to pay the judgement?
I would guess yes, if “help” means “providing all information at your disposal”
Judge Engoron entered a 90+ page order, and I heard the order gave her additional powers to oversee all financial operations, however, I honestly don’t know if that includes additional power to facilitate seizing assets. I would expect so, but I don’t know that for a fact.
Unfortunately, this isn’t just hyperbole: it is too realistic to be a joke.
If Trump wins the election, he will be crazy with revenge.
Letitia James, judge Engoron, and many others (Jack Smith, judge Tanya Chutkan, etc) have real reason to be afraid.
If I were in their shoes, I would drive over the border to Canada on Trump’s inauguration day, and arrange for a residency visa for at least 4 years.
But that’s also why they have a court appointed person watching their every move. They already caught him trying to change a bunch of address from, IIRC, NY to FL. I’d wager they were doing that specifically to try and hide, or at least shield, some of his assets.
I think the big payoff there would have been maintaining control. The order boots the Trumps from leadership of New York companies, not those based on other states.
Yep. I was responding to the question as to whether or not Florida real estate would be off limits to the prosecutors. I’d think Mar-a-Lago is in play, otherwise any defendant on the losing end of a judgment would just get his assets out of Dodge in anticipation.
Of course, you’re correct. For Trump specifically, his short leash will keep him in line.