Will Trump beat the new buzzer and get the $175 million to his bookie by April 4, in time to start his hush-money trial on April 15?
Probably. According to the New York Times, Trump has about $350 million in cash as well as stocks and bonds.
And coming up with $175 million is certainly a lighter lift than the $454 million he was earlier expected to come up with today—before a five-judge panel of appellate court judges in New York showed him mercy with a big discount and a deadline extension. This break will allow him to post the bond and appeal the $454 million judgment handed down by a judge in the New York civil fraud case.
(In the cable-news zeal about Trump’s losing Trump Tower, only one observer I found last week, University of Michigan business law professor Will Thomas, predicted that Trump would be saved by the appeals court.)
But if—when—TFG loses on appeal, as he’s expected to, the $454 million will come due, plus more interest and lawyers’ fees.
Trump’s bookie, of course, is Letitia James, the formidable New York attorney general. As of this writing, her office hasn’t commented on the discount and the extension given by the appeals court. But Trump is still under the shadow of her repeated threats that, the second he misses a deadline or a dollar, she’ll seize his shabby, fragmented, overleveraged assets.
I can’t say whether or not James will be pleased with this stay. On the one hand, it means she won’t get to start padlocking Trump Tower. On the other, the half-baked appeal can go forward and this thing will finally be done. And the extension the appeals court granted Trump is also an extension for New York state. Trump’s assets are indeed so shabby, fragmented, and overleveraged that “seizing” them would be a long-term office-wide migraine for the AG.
What assets, you ask? Restrooms and parking lots. Not buildings. NOT BUILDINGS. Because Trump owns not one actual building in New York City. Not the way you own your house or car. He has a ground lease here, a restaurant kitchen there. And all these tawdry shards of real estate are, as fallen fixer Michael Cohen has repeatedly said, already pledged to Trump’s other bookies.
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