Less than a month after New York Attorney General Letitia James said she would be willing to seize former Republican President Donald Trump’s assets if he is unable to pay the $464 million required by last month’s judgment in his civil fraud case, Trump’s lawyers disclosed in court filings Monday that he had failed to secure a bond for the amount.
In the nearly 5,000-page filing, lawyers for Trump said it has proven a “practical impossibility” for Trump to secure a bond from any financial institutions in the state, as “about 30 surety companies” have refused to accept assets including real estate as collateral and have demanded cash and other liquid assets instead.
To get the institutions to agree to cover that $464 million judgment if Trump loses his appeal and fails to pay the state, he would have to pledge more than $550 million as collateral—“a sum he simply does not have,” reportedThe New York Times, despite his frequent boasting of his wealth and business prowess.
Can’t do that. President doesn’t control the purse, both revenues and budget come from Congress. He’d have to get Congress to include paying his legal fees in the budget and manage to pass that budget. Then he could pay for the judgement with tax money.
You know that whole “fiscal cliff” thing that keeps happening? That’s a consequence of this - Congress assigns a maximum amount of debt that the President can issue bonds until it is reached to pay for things in the budget (issuing bonds is technically a power of Congress, but they delegate it up to a set value via legislation so that they don’t have to bother). Congress also assigns how much money will be spent on each thing (aka the budget). When the President is required to spend more by the budget than there is in tax revenue plus bonds he is allowed to issue, that’s the fiscal cliff. It’s literally a problem that Congress creates (by creating a budget that spends more than is available in taxes and bonds), that only Congress can fix (typically by raising the amount the President can issue in bonds), but that usually gets blamed on the President.
That’s good to know, thank you for the detailed explanation.
I’m still concerned he’ll do it, and his sycophant supporters will enable him and let him do it because they see this as him being politically persecuted. You’re probably right, but if trump wins, nothing is normal, there is no rule of law.
And we’ll see how well that statement holds up when it runs up against a candidate who’s already been impeached twice, is overleveraged and compromised from foreign assets, who’s ON RECORD HAVING SAID HE’D BE A DICTATOR WITH ALL THE POWERS OF A DICTATOR FOR THE FIRST FEW DAYS HE WAS IN OFFICE IN HIS SECOND TERM.
That’s how dictatorships start, they ask for the powers for just a few, just a little bit, and then it never gets returned.
So I have low confidence that anything we consider rule of law today will be in effect if trump should win a second term, with all the insane support he’s got within the GOP right now that currently controls the lower house.