Donald Trump is facing another potentially ruinous penalty for decades of bank fraud, after he was socked with $83 million in penalties for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, and his status as the Republican presidential frontrunner could make it impossible to borrow money to pay off those judgments.
New York Supreme Court justice Arthur Engoron is still considering how much to penalize the former president in the civil fraud trial, but he signaled that might run even higher than the $370 million sought by attorney general Letitia James, and state laws would put Trump in a sudden and perilous cash crunch, reported The Daily Beast.
"Trump’s sudden cash demands are exacerbated by a quirk in New York law," wrote political investigations reporter Jose Pagliery. "Not only would the judgment get automatically inflated by an unusually high interest rate of 9 percent, but Trump would need to give the court the enlarged total — plus an extra 10 to 20 percent — in order to appeal and have another day in court. And it would all be due by mid-March."
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"The self-proclaimed billionaire real estate tycoon is about to be caught in a trap of his own making," Pagliery added, "forced to front a massive amount of cash and possibly liquidate assets — while potentially unable to access the money, because the court order could limit his ability to tap his Monopoly board of properties."
Trump is facing difficulties in finding a surety company or bank to keep him afloat through the appeals process, due in large part to the credibility problems that landed him in court in the first place, and because he's facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison if he's not re-elected as president – either of which would put him out of reach from the creditors he needs to loan him the money.
“Sureties require an indemnification agreement, a contract for the bond," said Neil Pedersen, who runs an appellate bond agency in Manhattan. "Now a concern would be: How do you perfect an indemnity of the person that could be the next sitting president? How do you take that person to court?”
No lender would want to be left dangling on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to a borrower who would be unable to pay because they're in prison or unable to be sued because they served as president.
“These companies are pretty conservative by nature," said N. Alex Hanley, an expert in how companies appeal enormous judgments. "They're not likely to get involved in something that they think will get dragged on for a long time — and potentially not get paid for it. This has never been done, so it's completely unprecedented."
