Even for a billionaire, the financial straits faced by Donald Trump in his New York legal cases are proving to be too much.
The former president’s lawyers have asked a New York appellate court to allow him to post an appeals bond of just $100 million in his corporate-fraud case — less than a quarter of the $454 million he is required to put up to challenge the crushing financial penalty.
The request came as part of a filing asking the appeals court to put on hold a ruling by a Manhattan judge earlier this month that he pay the enormous penalty, while being barred from running his real-estate empire or borrowing money from New York lending institutions for three years.
“The exorbitant and punitive amount of the judgment coupled with an unlawful and unconstitutional blanket prohibition on lending transactions would make it impossible to secure and post a complete bond,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
Trump has 30 days from Feb. 23 — the day the Manhattan Supreme Court judgment was finalized — to secure a bond for the full amount of the $454 million penalty, in order to halt the execution of Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling.
Engoron had ruled that Trump, his two eldest sons and other executives at the Trump Organization had engaged in a pattern of fraud for years by misstating the value of Trump’s assets in order to receive better lending rates and lower insurance.
If he is unable to come up with the money, New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office brought the case, would have the power to begin seizing some of Trump’s properties.
Trump filed an appeal in the case on Monday, asking New York’s Appellate Division to rule on whether Engoron “committed errors of law and/or fact” and whether he abused his discretion or “acted in excess” of his jurisdiction.
Trump’s fortune is largely based on the value of his real-estate assets rather than cash holdings, making it difficult to secure such an enormous sum of money in such a short period of time. Typically, defendants pursuing appeals of financial penalties are able to secure specialized surety bonds by pledging assets as collateral. But the size of the penalties and Trump’s possible loss of control over what he owns has made that even more difficult.
Trump, who is leading in the race to become the Republican nominee for president this year, is also faced with having to pay penalties of $83.3 million and $5 million in separate defamation and sexual-abuse cases that he lost to author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s.
As part of Wednesday’s filing, Trump’s lawyers also asked the appellate court for a temporary stay on the imposition of a court-appointed monitor to oversee his holdings while he is barred from running them. That monitor, former judge and federal prosecutor Barbara Jones, would have to sign off on any financial transactions made by the Trump Organization.
