Trump asked the New York court to approve a bond of only $100 million to stay collection efforts by the NY Attorney General in his fraud case. He apparently does not have the cash, nor can he obtain a bond, for the full amount of the judgment—which is approximately $450 million and counting.
His lawyers claimed that he would have to liquidate some of his holdings to meet the bond requirement and cannot do so before collection measures could begin.
The NYTimes reporting is at www.nytimes.com/…
UPDATE: Trump apparently has new lawyers. The request for relief from the requirement to post a surety bond to stay collection was filed by Clifford S. Robert, who is with a 4-person firm on Long Island. No mention of Alina Habba or any of the other attorneys who represented him at trial. I’m not a law firm or law school snob, but it is very significant that Trump—supposedly a billionaire who until very recently claimed to have hundreds of millions in cash lying around—has to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find a lawyer who will represent him. Robert is essentially a solo practitioner from one of the lowest-ranked law schools in the country (Touro, 167th out of 196). Real billionaires, faced with bet-your-business litigation, do not fool around with the likes of Alina Habba or, maybe, this new guy.
I have always maintained that Trump is not actually a billionaire. Real billionaires don’t go for the petty grifts of the Trumps (Trump University, Trump sneakers). Real billionaires endow university and hospital buildings—not penny ante, fraudulent charities. And, real billionaires have access to cash—either because they actually have cash on hand or have banking relationships that they can tap—if they have collateral. Trump, on the other hand, might just be tapped out. If he was lying about the value of his assets, he has probably been lying about the magnitude of his debts--falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
FURTHER UPDATE: The appeals court judge denied Trump’s emergency request for a stay. There will be a hearing in mid-March before an appellate panel on Trump’s request to stay execution of the judgment upon posting a bond of less than the full potential judgement. However, the appeals court judge did allow Trump to seek financing from a New York bank so that he can meet the bond requirement.