Will Letitia James seize Trump Tower? Ex-president is running out of time to pay $464m bond
Lawyers for Donald Trump notified an appeals court this week that their client has failed to secure a bond to satisfy the $464m civil fraud judgment levelled against him by a New York court, saying finding a company to back such a large amount of money was proving a “practical impossibility”.
Mr Trump has hotly objected to a “fire sale” of his property empire – selling off assets to generate cash to meet the bond – but failing to do so risks allowing such prized properties as Trump Tower in Manhattan, so integral to his brand, to fall into the hands of New York attorney general Letitia James, who has already said she is more than happy to repossess his holdings.
The former president and current presumptive Republican presidential nominee has approached “about 30 surety companies through four separate brokers”, his attorneys said, but had so far come back empty-handed in the face of “insurmountable difficulties”.
“Critical among these challenges is not just the inability and reluctance of the vast majority of sureties to underwrite a bond for this unprecedented sum, but, even more significantly, the unwillingness of every surety bond provider approached by defendants to accept real estate as collateral,” his attorneys wrote.
The companies approached “will only accept cash or cash equivalents” such as marketable securities, they said, and would typically “require collateral of approximately 120 per cent of the amount of the judgment,” which, in this case, comes to almost $560m.
Sureties would then in all probability charge bond premiums of approximately 2 per cent per year “with two years in advance – an upfront cost over $18m,” according to the attorneys.
That money would not be recoverable even if Mr Trump were to ultimately succeed in overturning the judgment against him.
As it stands, the luxury property tycoon turned populist politician has until Monday 25 March to find the money if he wishes to appeal Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling last month that he must pay around $355m in fines and a further $100m plus in interest after being found guilty by a jury of misrepresenting the value of Trump Organization assets between 2011 and 2021 to obtain favourable loans from banks and insurers.
With interest ticking ever-upwards at 9 per cent or $120,000 a day, the exact total he owes at the time of writing (Wednesday 20 March), according to the helpful Trump Debt Counter website, is $467.6m.
The case was brought against the 45th president and his fellow executives in 2022 by New York attorney general Letitia James, whose office has since asked the appeals court to reject Mr Trump’s latest protestations.
In a court filing submitted on 20 March, Ms James argued that the court should dismiss the defendant’s complaints about being unable to meet his bond requirement as they are “procedurally improper”, saying he had had ample time to raise his objections beforehand.
She added that the Trump camp’s claims “boil down to the proposition that sureties have been unwilling to accept Mr Trump’s real estate holdings as collateral” but that the defendants had failed to supply “documentary evidence that demonstrates precisely what real property they offered to sureties, on what terms that property was offered, or precisely why the sureties were unwilling to accept the assets”.
Ms James further argued that, even if the court were to accept Mr Trump’s argument that real estate is difficult for a surety to accept as collateral for a bond, they had failed to suggest a serious alternative.
“If he does not have funds to pay off the judgement, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” she told ABC News recently.
