As the deadline draws near for The Former Guy to hand over $83 million to E. Jean Carroll or to place the cash into escrow so he can appeal the verdict, many of us have wondered about his next move.
One option would be not bothering to appeal and force E. Jean Carroll to go after his assets herself, a tedious and time-consuming process. But such a tactic would hardly work in the New York fraud case, as the state has much more power and resources at its disposal to begin seizing buildings and so forth.
David Cay Johnston of DC Report speculated on Monday (h/t to Josh Marshall of TPM for highlighting the article on Twitter) that Trump’s most likely avenue is to declare personal bankruptcy. This same approach has allowed Alex Jones to avoid paying a cent of the $1.5 billion judgment that he owes to the Sandy Hook parents for more than two years.
Johnston figures that making such a move will push any collection of Trump’s debts to well beyond the election—meaning that we won’t get to enjoy the humiliation of watching his name be removed from Trump Tower or Carroll getting to repaint his garish private jet anytime soon.
Filing for personal bankruptcy stops the clock on both awards. That means he won’t need to deposit cash or get bonds to appeal the Carroll and New York State civil fraud awards. The automatic stay to these and other civil proceedings would benefit Trump by getting past what he sees as the finish line: the Nov. 5 presidential election.
This is, personally, disappointing to me as I’d been hearing that his main options involved either putting up the money to appeal or allowing asset collection to begin. It seems that the avenues that allow Trump to delay the consequences of his actions over and over have not been exhausted.
Trump has little chance of prevailing on appeal in the Carroll and New York State fraud cases, though he might get modest modifications of the damage awards. Delaying payment will likely make him even worse off, assuming he actually is worth as much as he claims. … But that could be years off.
And if anyone imagines that Trump’s declaration of bankruptcy might tarnish his reputation as a business genius and true billionaire among his rabid followers, welcome to 2024 and I hope you enjoyed your time living under that rock.
[S]pinning a bankruptcy filing to his advantage would be easy. Trump will tell his cultish believers that he is as rich as ever, but he was forced to seek refuge in Bankruptcy Court by the Marxist-Fascist-Corrupt-Deep State-Liberal-Radical cabal he blames for his legal woes.