Donald Trump is unable to provide New York justice with the guarantee that he will pay a $454 million fine for financial fraud within his real estate empire, following his civil conviction in February, his lawyers admitted on Monday.
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In a 5,000-page judicial document posted online Monday by the appeals division of the New York State Supreme Court for Manhattan (trial court, Ed.), the defense of the former President of the United States argues that guaranteeing such a sum is “almost impossible.”
“The amount of the judgment, including interest, exceeds $464 million (Ed.: $355 million plus $100 million in interest for Donald Trump and eight million plus interest for his sons Donald Jr. and Eric), and very few companies consider posting a bond close to this magnitude,” protested the lawyers who said they had approached about thirty insurance companies.
This means that in the absence of a 100% guarantee on the fine, the appeal filed by Donald Trump in February before another jurisdiction, but without a second trial, will not be suspensive: the businessman and political figure will have to pay the full amount by March 25, or else see some of his real estate assets seized by the court.
The New York State Supreme Court’s appeals division had rejected a $100 million guarantee offer on February 28.
The former president and his two adult sons had also appealed against the ban on running businesses in the state of New York for three and two years respectively.
In February, their lawyers deemed the amount of the fine “exorbitant and vexatious” and the “general” ban on running businesses in New York “illegal and unconstitutional,” already considering it “impossible to provide and post a complete bond guarantee.”
In a landmark judgment on February 16, New York judge Arthur Engoron sentenced the former president to pay $354.86 million in fines for financial fraud, and each of the two sons $4 million.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James had filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump in October 2022 and had forced him, along with his sons and their Trump Organization group, to a civil trial for fraud from October to January of this year.
The mogul, who made a fortune in real estate and shook up the democracy of the world’s leading power, had denounced a “completely bogus” judgment by publicly denigrating the judges James and Engoron.
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