How deep are the Don's pockets?
That answer is sizzling now that former President Donald Trump has been ordered by a New York judge to pay more than $355 million in civil damages for his fraud case.
It adds to the $83.3 million judgment in the second E. Jean Carroll defamation trial loss to have the 45th president on the hook to pay almost half a billion dollars.
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Vox scrutinized Trump's assets and debts as he stumps to become the 47th president and fends off a landmine of civil and criminal cases.
Notably, if Trump appeals these decisions as he's vowed to do, cobbling together enough of the funds to keep the process going or even moving to secure a bond with a lender, comes with strings attached.
“It’s pretty scary from an ethics perspective,” Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said. CREW is a watchdog group spearheading the effort to disqualify him from the GOP primary ballot in Colorado, and it also tracks his reported abuses of power.
Being cash-strapped could affect national security issues if he were to return to power.
“For a person with access to U.S. classified information to be in massive financial debt is a counterintelligence risk because the debt-holder tends to have leverage over the person, and the leverage may be used to encourage actions, such as disclosure of information or influencing policy, that compromise U.S. national security,” David Kris, former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and founder of Culper Partners consulting firm, told Time magazine in 2020.
If Trump isn't the billionaire he claims to be Canter told the outlet it “makes him prime for corruption and really exploiting his office for his own personal gain.”
The publication popped the hood on some of Trump's most glaring liabilities.
Trump was deposed in 2023 and boasted to have on-hand $400 million in assets.
But given the damages he's being forced to remit, it won't be enough to cover them.
He could possibly try to chip away at some legal expenses by dipping into his campaign coffers but Trump is limited to how those funds can be used.
And Trump is swimming in $200 million debt, based on his 2023 financial disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Moreover, his business owed $1.3 billion dating back to 2021, according to Forbes.
Reportedly, Trump has been whittling down his liabilities for three years since leaving the White House after one term.
According to Vox, Trump’s paid back a Deutsche Bank note of $295 million.
