IANAL, but I get a distinct feeling of compromise in the appeal judgement. 50% of the original $350 million, and the extra 10 days? Yeah, nice round numbers, something that pleases everyone a little (not the $100 million asked for, a little extra time but not weeks/months, and the fact that by giving it, it pulls the rug out from under Trump’s "Only the Great Me gets treated this way).
SHOULD a compromise have been reached? Well, that veers towards pit territory, so I’ll avoid it. I suspect that the answer has been touched on already - Trump’s efforts to conceal his wealth (or, rather, lack thereof) is coming back to bite him, and all parties probably want to avoid this being dumped on a faux-to-real bankruptcy court any sooner than needed. If it had been me though, I’d have had Trump and his lawyers file a response to a REALLY BITING explanation of Trump’s claim to have the money on social media before I gave him any extra time - per his claims, $175 million leaves him nearly $300 million to spend on his political agenda.
It absolutely makes me grind my teeth (I had a nice bottle put aside for today if he dropped the ball!) but it strikes me as most compromises do - probably the best fix that a sadly imperfect world can manage. And I lean towards it being the wrong answer overall - because making one, and probably overall unjustified exception, means the courts are going to be stuck with the precedent going forward.
Why does he need to do that? He posted on Truth Social that he has almost $500 million in cash, which was earmarked for his campaign and therefore to save America, but now – due to that meanyboots judge – would have to go to pay the bond.
You’re not saying that Trump (gasp) lied about having that cash, are you?
IANAL, but I didn’t parse it that way. My interpretation: Interest still accrues, but enforcement is paused so Trump doesn’t have to pony up the cash now. Here’s the quote:
In addition to a trial date being set in the hush money case, a five-judge state appeals court panel in a Monday ruling said it would pause the enforcement of the $464 million judgment against Trump, the Trump Organization and top executives, plus interest, if within 10 days they post a $175 million bond.
I’d say that’s a pretty poorly written paragraph. It could be read as the interest has been paused, or not, depending on how you squint at it. If it were to cross my desk, I’d demand it be re-written to clarify its intent.
Yes, I actually am a professional nitpicker. No, seriously.
Bird in hand worth more
In other news, yesterday the Times published an article length version of Troutman’s point. Collecting on judgment can be hard in general and collecting on Trump’s maze of ownerships is particularly challenging. One property can’t be sold without permission of the co-owner. Another isn’t owned by Trump: the rights to lease the property are owned by Trump, which is worth less. Trump Tower has lost its shine. Also the NYC office market has been hit hard by remote working, so that depresses the values of his property interests further.
Overall Trump’s interests are -wait for it- over-valued. Gifted article.
This article gives me hope, and also a reason to cheer the recent court decision to settle for a 175 million bond.
This bond will likely be secured by cash and/or securities, not property or leases. It sounds like it would have been a nightmare for the AGNY to collect the penalties, once the appeals are finished. This way, they are guaranteed to relieve Trump of his cash, and leave him with his overvalued, leveraged properties that are worth much, much less than Trump claimed. As well as a legacy that means no bank will loan him a bean against these properties, as he’s a proven liar.
So in the end, I fondly hope that Trump is left cashless, with underwater properties and loans called in, leaving him in the poorhouse. A bonus will be if he’s also locked up.
I did wonder what TFG’s debt levels were at the moment, as there had been a lot of speculation when he left office that he was in an unsustainable position with hundreds of millions due. What happened there?
I found this Forbes article from 2021 that lists mortgages and loans due totalling over a billion dollars. Much will have changed since then, of course.
Is there any similar information available that’s more up to date?
I wonder if, behind the scenes over the last few weeks, Trump made clear to Jones that there’s no way he could possibly come up with nearly a half billion dollars, but he can come up with 175 million in cash. It’s possible she’d rather get the 175 million and can then decide how she wants to proceed with collecting the rest rather than going through endless court cases for every single piece of property she even considers seizing.
Kinda like calling your credit card company and saying that you know you own them 50k, but they can either settle for 20k or likely end up with nothing.
Mea culpa, I just read the headline. (Sure, and shared it.)
The only thing I’m certain of is that Trump hasn’t got a fraction of the wealth he claims, and the only other thing I’m sure of is that Trump is full of bullshit.
If I’m reading it [the one I linked to] correctly, his net worth of 6.4billion is based on Truth Social being worth $5,000,000,000 (or his share of it or something).
…his social media company Trump Media & Technology Group wrapped up a 29-month-long merger process, meaning shares worth billions of dollars on paper are now officially Trump’s.
All told, his net worth will increase by more than $4 billion.
But even then, he doesn’t have access to it for 6 months, which I suppose, makes Jones’ job easier as he can’t disappear it before she can get her hands on it. Not that it’s worth as much as he claims, but even a few hundred thousand dollars is better than nothing.
Also … do the MAGA math. Trump is claiming he has $500 million cash, and here’s Bloomberg claiming he’s worth $6.5 billion, and yet he just had his bond cut by more than 60% to a mere $175 million (with extra time to come up with it). So now he actually looks like a shrewd negotiator.
And you know someone else will put up that $175 million. So Trump will be out zero dollars for as long as the appeal takes – likely years. He may as well crow about “total exoneration” again.