NY A.G. Says Trump Is Lying to Avoid Paying $464 Million Judgment

Trump has until Monday to come up with the money.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has urged an appeals court to ignore Donald Trump’s latest effort to worm his way out of paying the $464 million disgorgement from his bank fraud trial.

On Wednesday, an attorney for James told the court that Trump’s claims could not be trusted since they were based on sworn statements by Alan Garten, general counsel at the Trump Organization, and Gary Giulietti, one of Trump’s close friends. There’s a precedent to disqualify them—during the trial, Judge Arthur Engoron decided that Giulietti could not be considered a credible witness and argued that Garten had “professional interests in this litigation.”

Garten, however, snapped back at that. “The court found no such thing. The AG statement is reckless and completely untrue,” Garten said in response to the filing, according to https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/20/trump-bond-letitia-james-fraud-new-york/.

So far, Trump has tried and failed to pause the rapidly growing interest on the judgment, counteroffering the court a $100 million bond in lieu of the full amount. He has also approached several brokers and 30 suretors for help securing a bond, though it didn’t seem to work out for him, according to a filing by Trump’s attorneys, who admitted that suretors refused to accept Trump’s real estate as collateral. Instead, they would only accept cash to the tune of $1 billion, which Trump said he and his businesses just don’t have.

nucleative,

The billion number is because the suretors project he’ll lose on appeal and then they will need to collect on his assets which he will fight tooth and nail for again.

So by the time they finally get it they’d only net a tiny profit for the pain. Hardly worth it.

Either that or the price tag is the “We don’t want to do business with you but we’re also not going to say no” price.

Tylerdurdon,

I’m not surprised regarding the situation but this comment isn’t about that.

Let’s use this picture for every Trump story.

YeetPics,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

Double the fine, I shouldn’t have to hear about this fuckers inability to pay his dues anymore. He clearly can’t pay it, broke ass mf

Diplomjodler,

Any regular person would just have their assets seized but when you’re rich (or pretend to be), they let you do it.

Nougat,

Instead, they would only accept cash to the tune of $1 billion, ...

"I need a $500M loan, what do you want for collateral?"

"One billion dollars."

This is absolutely hilarious. Even Trump's cash is only worth 50% of its face value.

ninjan,

It’s more you need to prove you have $1 billion for us to put up this $500 million because we don’t trust you to not spend a $500 million collateral on hamberders, hush money and legal fees.

Nougat,

... suretors refused to accept Trump’s real estate as collateral. Instead, they would only accept cash to the tune of $1 billion, which Trump said he and his businesses just don’t have.

If they want cash as collateral, that cash would go into an escrow. Why would you tie up $1B in escrow in order to get $500M? You wouldn't; you would just use the cash you had.

It's like going to a pawn shop and asking how much they'll give you for a $20 bill, and they say $10.

ninjan,

With escrow its completely pointless as you say to not pay it yourself. So I have to assume it’s the terms for when it’s not to be put in escrow.

themeatbridge,

I would imagine that the collateral could be cash or liquid assets like stocks or bonds. That would justify the additional demand of $1 billion, because stock values fluctuate. The benefit to Trump is that he wouldn’t have to sell the assets, incurring a taxable event, and potentially losing out on future capital gains (or capital losses to be used as tax offsets).

Putting the money in escrow for the appeal would need to be cash.

homesweethomeMrL,

So . . . he’s not a billionaire?

Like we all knew? for years? And laughed at the fucking idiots who thought he was?

For srs? Wow. Just - mind blown.

mipadaitu,

Kinda makes sense though. If he had physical property worth $500M, they could put a lien on it preventing him from selling it. If he had $500M cash, and used that as collateral, he could just spend it on his other legal issues and the banks would lose out.

He needs $1 Billion so he has some headroom for his other legal troubles to siphon some of it off and still have enough to pay back the bond.

Potatos_are_not_friends,

I imagine during the Trump fire sale, buying a Trump property would require to invest heavily in clean up and bringing it to code. So yeah, $1 Donald Dollar is like half.

JoMiran,
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

Trump…is…lying??? Whhaaaaa???

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/a0eac331-e644-458c-912d-f519c7dda29d.jpeg

Feathercrown,

Inconceivable!

givesomefucks,

Regardless of if he can secure a bond or not, he’s not doing it before the last second.

Judgement could be $5 and trump would swear up and down he couldn’t get it

I don’t think he can get a legit bond for this much, but what I’m worried about is foreign governments going thru dirty banks to put it up. And they’re waiting till the last possible second so trump will agree to anything they ask.

For half a billion dollars trump would do damn near anything, and running against Biden there’s a legit chance he wins. Polling is fucking depressing and Biden doesn’t seem motivated to reach out to any voters unless they usually vote Republican

TWeaK,

Polling is done by the likes of YouGov, they’re not exactly impartial.

givesomefucks,

Can you name a poll you trust?

Theprogressivist,
@Theprogressivist@lemmy.world avatar

None. Just go out and vote.

capital_sniff,

Polling this far out is going to be bad. As election day gets closer more and more of this information will trickle down to the low information voters.

givesomefucks,

Polling this far out is going to be bad.

True…

But this is worse than it normally is.

Biden s barely winning national polls. And since the electoral college favors Republican states so much, there is no way Biden can pull a trump and lose the popular vote but still win the election.

And if you zero in on battleground states, the same is true.

We’re worse off than normal.

capital_sniff,

I don’t disagree and on a fundamental level this is a disaster. The fact that this election is close and represents a choice between a right wing authoritarian and Joe Biden is absolutely ridiculous. I’m just hoping the undecided voters make the right decision this November.

givesomefucks,

Yeah, but at a certain point we need to ask why these people are the only other option.

Biden spent $13/vote in 2020, almost double trump’s 7/vote to win 2016.

newsweek.com/joe-biden-billion-dollar-campaign-sp…

Biden spent over a billion dollars to win his last election, and this one will be even more expensive.

We can blame millions of voters for not holding their noses.

But we shouldn’t let the people running the party and Biden off the hook. We all did it four years ago, and now they’re doing it again.

Even his most feverent supporters openly admit the reason this debt relief is happening is the upcoming election, which means there’s zero reason to expect anything more after election day.

But we’re stuck in this vicious cycle where every election it costs more to get votes for bad candidates, so the next time they take more money from the wealthy, and become worse candidates.

When any cycle we could just run a candidate that’s actually popular, spend 100s of millions less in advertising, and have a good president not reliant on keeping the 1% happy to get re-elected.

Either we eventually fix the system, or shit never gets better.

Ekybio,
@Ekybio@lemmy.world avatar

I read so much BS about this guy, it will greatly help my sanity if and when they finally catch him on at least SOMETHING

orclev,

Trump is, was, and has always been, a conman. It’s his bread and butter. It was critical to the facade of “highly successful businessman” that he put up that he appear ridiculously wealthy. Not just wealthy, but ultra wealthy. While he has always had hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, and owned many properties that when combined would total over a billion dollars in value, he has never at any point in his life had access to the kind of wealth that the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates have. Even worse for him, he’s actually an incredibly bad businessman, nearly every venture Trump has directly been involved in (rather than just licensing his name for someone actually competent to use) has failed utterly.

In an effort to shore up his image Trump has for decades inflated the value of all his properties, and then used those inflated values to take out loans and mortgages that he then blows on bad business decisions. There’s a very real chance that he might actually be telling the truth for the first time in his life and he can’t actually scrape together the nearly $500 million even if he sold every piece of property he owns. He may have already over leveraged it all so badly that there’s just not $100 million of value left to squeeze out of it.

Of course it’s also possible he actually could come up with the money but doing so would require him to liquidate every property he owns and would also expose just how badly he has managed the wealth left to him by his father. Something he desperately wants to avoid lest it utterly shatter his “successful businessman” facade forever (not to mention legitimately bankrupt him for once in his life).

Either way it’s about time a lifetime of fraud and lies caught up to him.

jballs,
@jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

Hard to believe the deadline is Monday. Like you, I feel like I’ve been waiting for just some fucking consequence to finally catch up to this asshole for years. Can’t wait for them to seize Trump Tower and turn it into a Spirit Halloween.

FuglyDuck,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

well. We knew he was lying.

You can tell by the he’s saying stuff. if he’s saying stuff. he’s lying.

Crazyslinkz,

I’m curious as to how someone can get so far in life without a single truth and all projection…

Oh yeah, politics 🙄

themeatbridge,

Don’t kid yourself, it’s not just politics. Bullshit, ego, and a callous disregard for the welfare of others can make you extremely successful in any capitalist endeavor.

Potatos_are_not_friends,

I think a lot about Bernie Madoff.

Bernie Madoff ran a massive Ponzi scheme, for decades. He promised high, consistent returns on investments. The scheme relied on money from new investors to pay out returns to existing ones. In 2008, when many investors tried to withdraw their money, the scheme unraveled.

All of his collaborators in his company realized the train wreck. But they knew if they didn’t continue with the lying/scamming, a lot of their colleagues would lose their jobs. So the absolute honest people left, but the morally grey stayed.

I think it’s like that with Trump (and Musk). Trump still employs a LOT of people - everything from managers to gardeners. And in his ranks are people who don’t want this sinking ship fail. The result is that there are competent people who, because they don’t want “innocent” people to suffer, like kitchen staff or gardeners, they’re good at their jobs and unfortunately, that puts money into Trump’s pocket.

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