Letitia James doesn't want a 'fire sale' of Trump properties any more than he does: expert

It won't be easy to seize Donald Trump's property to satisfy the $464 million judgment against him in the New York fraud case.

Prior mortgages on Trump properties won't prevent New York Attorney General Letitia James from trying to collect on his assets, but some of those loans are forbiddingly steep and would make a forced sale less attractive, according to MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin.

"I tell you this because while Trump complains that the New York AG is desperate to sell off his empire, James herself has little interest in doing so," Rubin wrote.

"Not only would she collect after any prior secured lenders and/or creditors are paid but also, as her office explained in a reply brief Wednesday, shifting 'the risk of executing on Defendants’ illiquid assets' to the attorney general would itself be unacceptable."

Trump earlier this week complained that the need to find the bond would force him into a "fire sale" of his properties, though he has not apparently started to sell anything yet.

Axos Bank holds more than $100 million in loans to the former president for Trump Tower’s commercial portion and $125 million for the Doral golf course in Miami, according to a Washington Post report, so that makes those properties less valuable in lieu of the judgment the former president owes to the state for habitually defrauding banks.

"The position of the attorney general's office is that, if Trump and his businesses truly cannot obtain or provide an undertaking, they should consent to have their real estate assets 'held by [the New York] Supreme Court to satisfy the judgment,'" Rubin wrote.

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The former president must come up with a bond worth 110 percent of the judgment by Monday or James will enforce the penalty, but Rubin doesn't expect James to start snapping up Trump properties and selling them off.

"In other words, the office is saying that it does not want a mess of “a fire sale” any more than Trump does; in lieu of an adequate bond or cash, it would much rather Trump simply let the court hold the assets in a kind of escrow," Rubin said.