Ahead of former President Donald Trump‘s March 25 deadline to pay his New York civil fraud fine, his son, Donald Trump Jr., claimed that people are changing the values of Trump properties based on convenience.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump and some of his business associates had illegitimately inflated the value of his assets to obtain more favorable terms from lenders and insurers. In February, the judge ordered the former president to pay roughly $355 million in penalties for fraud, plus interest. With this, the payment exceeds $464 million. He also banned him from serving in top roles in any New York business for three years. Trump has always denied any wrongdoing.
To appeal his civil fraud conviction, the former president has to pay the $464 million bond, which he has admitted he is having difficulty raising the funds for. If he’s unable to get the money together by Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James may start seizing his assets. This has led people to speculate about the true value of his properties, such as Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower.
During a conversation with Newsmax‘s Eric Bolling on Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. came to his father’s defense.
“If it’s worth 18 million and that’s good for the soundbite at the time, it’s worth 18 million, if it’s worth hundreds of millions the next day for a different purpose, it’s worth hundreds of millions and that’s what’s going on,” he said.
He went on to say that it’s not going to end with “them trying to go after Donald Trump” and eventually, others could have their assets seized as well.
Donald Trump Jr. added: “They’re willing to seize your assets, the people screaming about fascism are acting awfully a lot like the fascists.”
Newsweek has emailed Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. for comment via Trump’s campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung.
As Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort residence, is not for sale—and the Trump family has never expressed the wish to put it on the market—it’s hard to determine its value. In 2017, Forbes valued Trump Tower at $371 million.
According to Sportico, which cited the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Trump International Golf Links Scotland is his second most profitable course, bringing in $52 million between January 2022 and April 2023 for the presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
His course in Jupiter, Florida, is his fourth most profitable course, having made the former president $39.4 million in that period.
Newsweek could not immediately verify Sportico’s data and has contacted a Trump representative by email to comment on this story.
According to Trump’s 2023 Office of Government Ethics certified financial disclosures, obtained by the Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington (CREW), Trump has loans on multiple properties that may affect their value. The combined total of the properties listed by the disclosures is at least $200 million.
One is a mortgage on Trump Tower, incurred in 2012, that is for over $50 million. Another, for private estate Seven Springs, was incurred in 2000. It is worth between $5 million and $25 million.
40 Wall Street also has a mortgage of over $50 million. James said these properties had “fraudulent” and “misleading” values and could end up being seized.
If the properties are not seized, it has been speculated that the former president may have to sell off some of his real estate empire to pay the penalty.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Photo: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When Judge Arthur Engoron handed down a $464 million penalty to Donald Trump earlier this month, the ex-president found himself in a bind. With most of his net worth tied up in real estate, Trump does not have the cash to pay the fines outright — meaning he would need to seek out a loan to avoid a fire sale of his properties. But because Engoron banned Trump from taking out loans with New York banks, he could not easily get a loan to secure a bond for the full monetary judgment.
But on Wednesday, Trump caught a break: New York Supreme Court Appellate Judge Anil Singh ruled that Trump can apply for a loan to pay the bond on the nearly half-billion in fines, responding to a filing Trump’s team had made earlier that day in appeals court.
This means that, for the time being, Trump will not need to sell off his New York properties. But it was far from a total victory. Trump’s lawyers lost their effort to pause enforcement of the penalty, or to remove the independent director of compliance who oversees the Trump Organization now that Trump has been barred from doing so. Bloomberg also reports that the ruling will only remain valid “until a full appellate panel hears Trump’s request for a delay that would last for his entire appeal.”
Before Judge Singh delivered his decision, Trump’s lawyers argued that if he could not apply for loans, he would probably need to sell some of his assets in New York. “The exorbitant and punitive amount of the judgment coupled with an unlawful and unconstitutional blanket prohibition on lending transactions would make it impossible to secure and post a complete bond,” they wrote. Singh’s decision now allows Trump to go to a bank to get the money — though he will still be required to pay tens of thousands of dollars in interest each day the bond is not posted.
But due to his six bankruptcies and a long history of not paying bills, some major banks are understandably hesitant to loan to the former president, which has required him to go off the beaten path for post-presidential refinancing. When Trump goes to a lender in the next few weeks, he may need to negotiate on highly unfavorable terms. He might not have to sell off his New York properties just yet, but he may have to put one up as collateral.
Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty
If you walked around New York City a decade ago, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Donald Trump owned a huge chunk of it. While the biggest landowners in the city have long looked down on his portfolio — “Donald Trump is not a major player in New York City real estate,” a director at the Durst Organization scoffed in 2013 — the former president is perhaps unmatched in his self-promotional bluster and the visibility of his brand.
But Trump’s golden façade has been crumbling for years. Since he was elected president, units in his buildings have sold for less than those in their luxury competitors and struggled with vacancies. Condo boards across Manhattan have voted to remove his name from their buildings; in 2019, even the flagship Trump International Hotel and Tower agreed to reduce the size of his name. But Trump’s grift came into sharper focus after New York attorney general Letitia James’s civil lawsuit in late September, which alleges that Trump and his family fraudulently inflated the value of their properties in order to receive favorable loans and, in the process, hundreds of millions of dollars. In mid-February, Justice Arthur Engoron found the Trump Organization guilty, and the judgment, tallied on February 23, totals $454 million with interest. Engoran’s ruling doesn’t permanently bar Trump and his eldest children from running the Trump Organization, but Trump is barred from running any corporation in the state for three years, while his sons Donald Jr. and Eric are barred for two. James has also stated that if Trump is not able to pay (and he certainly doesn’t seem to have all that cash on hand), she would seize his real estate assets. But what does Trump actually own in New York?
It’s a question that perhaps only Trump and his lawyers can answer — and maybe some government investigators. That said, James’s filing, media reports, and public records paint a pretty good picture of a so-called real-estate “empire” far smaller than his brand suggests. In 2015, there were a reported 17 buildings in Manhattan bearing Trump’s name (along with Central Park’s Wollman Rink and the Trump Golf Links golf course in the Bronx). But a number of those have since shed their Trump branding, and it appears his hold on many of the remaining properties is tenuous at best — one licensing-deal expiration away.
1 Central Park West
Trump owns the service areas.
Trump International Hotel
Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Although it’s a popular target for anti-Trump protests, the Columbus Circle building, which is roughly half hotel rooms and half condos, is owned by General Electric and Ohio’s Galbreath Company, which hired Trump to glitz it up in 1996. What Trump does own here, according to the New York Times, are the parking garage, the valet booth, room-service kitchens, lobby bathrooms, a restaurant space, and one unit.
In 2019, condo owners demanded the removal of Trump’s large, block-letter name from the façade for dragging down their property values. In a compromise suggested by Donald Trump Jr., the building ended up splitting the façade in two: the left half reads “Trump International Hotel” and the right, “One Central Park West” — both in a serif font that’s slightly smaller and less tacky than before.
725 Fifth Avenue
The Trump Organization owns the retail and commercial portions of the building and Trump owns a triplex apartment here.
Trump Tower
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The Trump Organization owns the retail and commercial portion of the 58-story Trump Tower, where Trump infamously descended on an escalator before his run for the White House. This is its headquarters after all. Letitia James’s filing alleges that Trump significantly inflated the square footage of his triplex apartment here, claiming that it spanned as much as 33,000 feet when it was just over 10,000 feet. “Based on that inflated square footage, the value of the apartment in 2015, in 2016, was $327 million,” James noted. “To this date, no apartment in New York City has ever sold for close to that amount.”
Trump Tower has reportedly struggled with high vacancies (though a cast of infamous characters has called it home). In 2021, the Trump Organization’s $100 million mortgage on the building was put on a watch list before the company refinanced it this year. According to the Washington Post, a MAGA-affiliated PAC was recently one of its most reliable tenants, paying $37,500 per month to lease office space and another $3,000 per month for a kiosk in the lobby — despite the lobby being closed.
40 Wall Street
Trump owns the ground lease.
The Trump Building
Photo: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
This Great Depression–era skyscraper on Wall Street features prominently in James’s lawsuit: She accused Trump of valuing the building as high as $530 million in 2013, despite a bank-ordered appraisal that had put its worth at $220 million the previous year.
And while 40 Wall Street is one of Trump’s largest holdings, he doesn’t actually own the property. Rather, he owns the “ground lease” to the 72-story building, which requires him to pay rent to the landowners — the obscure but wealthy Hinneberg family of Germany.
1290 Sixth Avenue
Trump owns a 30 percent stake.
Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Trump acquired a chunk of 1290 Avenue of the Americas almost by accident, when Hong Kong investors who’d bailed him out of a residential project near Lincoln Center swapped it for the midtown office building instead — leaving Trump with a 30 percent stake in the office building that is locked up until 2044 — which means he can’t sell it until then (when he’ll be 97 years old). The Hong Kong investors then sold their controlling interest to Vornado. Trump has no control over the building’s management or branding, but his share on paper is one of his company’s biggest assets.
James accuses Trump of conveniently omitting the restrictions of the share — like not being able to sell it for decades — in his financial statements, which falsely portrayed the amount as “cash” that he controlled. James said Trump cherry-picked numbers to create “false and misleading valuations” that made the property appear to be worth $1.5 billion more than it was in reality.
502 Park Avenue
Trump may own some units.
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Trump reportedly owned 23 apartments in this 32-story building as of 2013, which included unsold condos and rental units. In 2011, Ivanka Trump rented one of the unsold penthouses, which included an option to buy it for $8.5 million. But shortly thereafter, the Trump Organization claimed the unit was worth $25 million without disclosing the far cheaper price offered to Ivanka. Another issue was that 12 of the building’s apartments are rent-stabilized — Don Jr. has reportedly called them “the bane of my existence” — and appraised by a bank at $750,000 in total. The Trump Organization claimed those apartments were worth as much as $50 million. This creative accounting enabled the Trump Organization to value the building as high as $350 million, James’s lawsuit said. But in reality, it was worth much less — $72.5 million, according to a 2010 valuation.
4–8 East 57th Street
Trump owns the ground lease.
Photo: Patti McConville/Alamy Stock Photo
Trump owns the ground lease but not the land under 4–8 East 57th Street, a cavernous single-tenant commercial building formerly known as Niketown. This means he’s paying ground rent to an entity known as 57 Street Associates, which is associated with an obscure midtown real-estate company called Digby Management, according to public records.
James’s filing alleges that Trump essentially took a number from 1995 and multiplied it by a fixed percentage every year to come up with an inflated valuation of $422 million while omitting that its ground rent to the landowner was “increasing substantially.”
Nike moved out in 2017. In 2018, Tiffany & Co. moved in temporarily while it renovated its flagship store nearby — but it will be moving out soon.
100–106 Central Park South
Trump may own some units.
Trump Parc
Photo: Kenneth Grant/Alamy Stock Photo
Trump bought 106 Central Park South, a 38-story hotel (now referred to as Trump Parc) and 100 Central Park South, an apartment building, in 1981 to turn into luxury condos. The 14-story 100 Central Park South (referred to as Trump Parc East) came with tenants in rent-controlled and rent-stabilized units, whom Trump unsuccessfully tried to harass into leaving — instead, he ended up having to pay their legal fees.
Today, Trump’s ownership here is likely limited to a handful of apartments. That’s after he sold a few units to Eric, his son, for well below market price in 2016, which could have saved him a hefty tax bill, a ProPublica investigation found.
167 East 61st Street
Trump may own some units.
Trump Plaza
Photo: Google Maps
Trump reportedly owns two units in this 36-story Upper East Side co-op building which still bears his name.
845 United Nations Plaza
Trump doesn’t own it.
Photo: imageBROKER/Alamy Stock Photo
This 376-unit midtown residential condo building came under scrutiny in 2018 when the Qatari government bought a $6.5 million apartment here while Trump was in the White House. A Trump Organization attorney said the building is owned by its third-party condo owners, not Trump, and therefore Trump would not profit from Qatar’s purchase. But legal experts pointed out that the Trump Organization could still be collecting fees from Qatar as the building’s property manager, which could have violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause forbidding those holding federal office from receiving gifts from a foreign state or its representatives. During the 1990s and aughts, Derek Jeter, Bill Gates, Harrison Ford, and Kellyanne Conway owned or rented units here.
610 Park Avenue
Trump never owned it.
Photo: Google Maps
On it’s website, the Trump Organization lists the condo building at 610 Park Avenue as part of its real-estate portfolio. It’s just the property manager though. The owner is Colony Capital, which bought the building from the former Mayfair Hotel in a bankruptcy auction in 1998. Trump has never claimed owning any part of the building.
200 East 69th Street
Trump doesn’t own it.
Photo: Google Maps
Trump bought and razed the former New York Foundling Hospital building to erect Trump Palace, which, at 55 stories, was the Upper East Side’s tallest structure when it was finished in 1991. Residents of the condo building included Keith Olbermann, who tweeted when he sold his condo in 2016 that he had gotten back “90% of my money and 100% of my soul.”
There’s no indication that Trump still owns any part of this building. In 2021, the co-op removed Trump’s name from the façade — to the relief of many residents.
140, 160, 180, 200, 220, and 240 Riverside Boulevard
Trump doesn’t own it.
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Until recently, six of the most vaunted residential buildings on Riverside Boulevard were named “Trump Place” — but Trump didn’t build them. He originally bought the lot in 1985 as part of a failed pitch to turn it into a vast complex called “Television City.” Facing bankruptcy in the 1990s, Trump sold a controlling interest in the project to a group of Hong Kong investors (he was left with a 30 percent stake). The investors built three residential towers before selling them to Extell and the Carlyle Group, then used the proceeds from that sale to buy 1290 Avenue of the Americas from Apollo and Jamestown, which transferred Trump’s minority stake to 1290 (and removed him from any ownership in the Riverside towers).
Extell, the site’s new owner, sold the three buildings (140, 160, and 180 Riverside Boulevard) to Equity Residential, then built three more. The newer three (200, 220, and 240 Riverside Boulevard) are managed by the Trump Organization, though all six initially carried Trump’s branding. The non-Trump-managed properties began removing his name as soon as he was elected in 2016, and by 2019, all six buildings had voted to dump “Trump.” There’s no indication that Trump owns any units here.
246 Spring Street
Trump never owned it.
Photo: Stacy Walsh Rosenstock/Alamy Stock Photo
Trump never invested money into building this condo hotel. But he struck a deal with its partners — including Russian-mafia-linked convicted felon Felix Sater, to license the Trump name and manage the building, which he first announced on The Apprentice. In 2015, Sater helped Trump pursue a deal to open a Trump Tower in Moscow, bragging to Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen that he had close ties to Vladimir Putin. “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote.
Trump SoHo drew protests from locals as soon as it was announced and struggled to attract guests and buyers. It was later hit by a lawsuit from condo owners who accused the Trump Organization of inflating sales numbers to entice them into buying, then another lawsuit by an employee at Sater’s firm, Bayrock, who alleged that the hotel was a front for money laundering. Trump cut ties with the building in 2017, and he has since claimed he wouldn’t recognize Sater if they were in the same room.
500 Hutchinson River Parkway
Trump never owned it.
Photo: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo
Updated February 23, 2024: Bally’s Corporation purchased the golf course in 2023 and changed the name to Bally Links in January.
This golf course on a former landfill in the Bronx was built by New York City with a reported $127 million in taxpayer money. In 2012, the city granted Trump a 20-year license to operate the course with a 100-foot-wide “Trump Golf Links” sign visible from the Whitestone Bridge — a sweet deal that has allowed Trump “to keep almost every dollar that flows in,” according to the Washington Post. But those days are almost over, as the contract is set to expire early next year.
The city is currently facing demands from City Council members and families of 9/11 victims to end the contract even earlier — before a planned women’s tournament in mid-October that’s backed by the Saudi government. But the mayor and the city’s parks department have refused, saying that would mean paying Trump as much as a $30 million termination fee in addition to possibly getting sued.
It turns out that of the many Trump-branded or -associated properties, he appears to own just a few units or portions of a building, such as at Trump Tower. In most other cases, Trump’s name on a building represents a licensing agreement, a condition of sale, or the Trump Organization’s role as property manager. Trump’s only equity in many of “his” buildings appears limited to a handful of unsold apartments or common spaces — if any at all. In effect, his footprint in New York has already been shrinking for years, and James’s lawsuit, while it may never come to fruition, has laid that bare.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump could be at risk of losing some of his prized properties if he can’t pay his staggering New York civil fraud penalty. With interest, he owes the state nearly $454 million — and the amount is going up $87,502 each day until he pays.
New York Attorney General Letitia James told ABC News on Tuesday that she will seek to seize some of the former president’s assets if he’s unable to cover the bill from Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 ruling.
Engoron concluded that Trump lied for years about his wealth as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to stardom and the White House. Trump denies wrongdoing and has vowed to appeal.
“If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” James, a Democrat, said in an interview with ABC reporter Aaron Katersky.
Trump’s ability to pay his mounting legal debts is increasingly murky after back-to-back courtroom losses. In January, a jury ordered him to pay $83.3 million for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
Trump claimed last year that he has about $400 million in cash — reserves that would get eaten up by his court penalties. The rest of his net worth, which he says is several billion dollars, is tied up in golf courses, skyscrapers and other properties, along with investments and other holdings.
But don’t expect James to try to grab the keys to Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago immediately. Trump’s promised appeal is likely to halt collection of his penalty while the process plays out.
Here’s a look at where things stand in the wake of Trump’s costly verdict.
COULD THE STATE REALLY SEIZE TRUMP’S ASSETS?
Yes. If Trump isn’t able to pay, the state “could levy and sell his assets, lien his real property, and garnish anyone who owes him money,” Syracuse University Law Professor Gregory Germain said.
Seizing assets is a common legal tactic when a defendant can’t access enough cash to pay a civil penalty. In a famous example, O.J. Simpson’s Heisman Trophy was seized and sold at auction in 1999 to cover part of a $33.5 million wrongful death judgment against him.
Trump could avoid losing assets to seizure if he has enough cash — or can free up enough cash — to pay his penalty and mounting interest.
How much he has isn’t clear because most information about Trump’s finances comes from Trump himself via his government disclosures and the annual financial statements that Engoron has deemed fraudulent.
Trump reported having about $294 million in cash or cash equivalents on his most recent annual financial statement for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021.
After that, according to state lawyers, he added about $186.8 million from selling the lease on his Washington hotel in May 2022 and the rights to manage a New York City golf course in June 2023. Part of Trump’s penalty requires that he give those proceeds to the state, plus interest.
Engoron’s decision last week spared Trump’s real estate empire from what the Republican front-runner deemed the “corporate death penalty,” reversing a prior ruling and opting to leave his company in business, albeit with severe restrictions including oversight from a court-appointed monitor.
James didn’t specify to ABC which of Trump’s assets the state might want to seize, though she noted that her office is right across the street from a Trump-owned office building in Lower Manhattan that was the subject of some of the fraud allegations in her lawsuit.
“We are prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid to New Yorkers,” James told ABC. “And yes, I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day.”
HOW WILL AN APPEAL AFFECT TRUMP’S PENALTY?
With Trump promising to appeal, it’s unlikely he’ll have to pay the penalty — or face the prospect of having some of his assets seized — for a while. If he wins, he might not have to pay anything.
Under state law, Trump will receive an automatic stay if he puts up money, assets or an appeal bond covering the amount he owes. A stay is a legal mechanism halting enforcement of a court decision while the appeals process plays out.
“Even if we choose to appeal this – which we will – we have to post the bond, which is the full amount and some, and we will be prepared to do that,” Trump lawyer Alina Habba told Fox News on Monday.
Trump’s lawyers can also ask the appeals court to grant a stay without obtaining a bond or with a bond for a lower amount.
In his Georgia election interference criminal case, Trump paid $20,000 — or 10% — for a $200,000 release bond. After losing at a first trial involving Carroll last year, Trump put $5.55 million in escrow to cover the cost of the judgment while he appeals. He has said he would appeal the $83.3 million January verdict but has yet to do so.
“If he can’t post a bond or meet the appellate division’s bonding requirements, then I would expect him to file bankruptcy to take advantage of the automatic stay on collection,” Germain said. “But that’s a couple of chess moves away, so we will just have to see what happens.”
Trump’s vow to appeal all but assures the legal fight over his business practices will persist into the thick of the presidential primary season as he tries to clinch the Republican nomination in his quest to retake the White House.
The appeal is also likely to overlap with his criminal trial next month in his New York hush-money case, the first of his four criminal cases to go to trial.
Trump’s 30-day window to appeal won’t start until the clerk at Engoron’s courthouse files paperwork making the verdict official. Engoron sent the paperwork to the clerk’s office Thursday, but it has yet to be filed. The judge rejected a request from Trump’s lawyer Clifford Robert asking for the enforcement of the penalty to be delayed 30 days “given the magnitude” of the judgment. Engoron, replying to the lawyer by email, said: “You have failed to explain, much less justify, any basis for a stay. I am confident that the Appellate Division will protect your appellate rights.”
DOES TRUMP REALLY OWE $87,502 A DAY IN INTEREST?
With each passing day, Trump owes an additional $87,502 in interest on his civil fraud penalty. By Thursday, that’ll be an extra $525,000 since the decision was issued on Feb. 16. The interest will continue to accrue even while he appeals. Barring court intervention or an earlier resolution, his bill will soar to a half-billion dollars by August 2025.
Trump’s underlying penalty is $355 million, the equivalent of what the judge said were “ill-gotten gains” from savings on lower loan interest and windfall profits from development deals he wouldn’t have been able to make if he’d been honest about his wealth.
Under state law, he is being charged interest on that amount at an annual rate of 9%.
As of Wednesday, Trump owed just over $99 million in interest, bringing his total to just under $454 million — that’s $453,981,779 to be exact, according to the Associated Press’ calculations. Trump’s interest will keep accruing until Trump pays. Trump owes the money individually and as the owner of corporate entities that were named as defendants in James’ lawsuit.
Engoron said the interest Trump owes on about half of the total penalty amount — pertaining to loan savings — can be calculated from the start of James’ investigation in March 2019. Interest on the remaining amount — which pertains to the sale of Trump’s Washington hotel and Bronx golf course rights — can be calculated starting in May 2022 or June 2023.
In all, Engoron ordered Trump and his co-defendants to pay $363.9 million in penalties, or about $464.3 million with interest — the total bill increases by $89,729 per day, according to AP’s calculations.
Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., must each pay about $4.7 million, including interest, to the state for their shares of the Washington hotel sales. Weisselberg was ordered to pay $1 million — for half of the $2 million severance he’s receiving — plus about $100,000 in interest.
Until they pay, Weisselberg is on the hook for another $247 per day, while Trump’s sons each owe an extra $990 per day, according to AP’s calculations.
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The New York attorney general will be able to seize former President Donald Trump‘s properties if he doesn’t pay his $450 million fraud judgment, a legal expert has said.
Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, said that Letitia James, who brought the civil case against Trump, would be able to “levy and sell” Trump’s property to pay for the judgment.
“The properties would probably be sold whether Trump wants to sell or not, unless he could come up with the cash to pay the judgment in full,” Germain said.
He said that Trump’s business assets would not be exempt from the judgment.
“A judgment creditor can go after whatever assets the creditor wants to, unless they are exempt from execution, and business assets are not exempt from execution. Usually creditors go after the most liquid assets first,” he said.
Germain said that Trump also faces the difficulty of having to get permission from a court-appointed monitor before selling some of his key assets.
Last September, the judge in Trump’s fraud trial, Arthur Engoron, appointed retired judge Barbara Jones to oversee Trump’s business interests in New York. She will appoint a business manager who will have ultimate say over whether Trump is allowed to sell business assets.
“The new business manager has the ultimate decision-making authority on operating or selling property. Trump could ask for sale, but he wouldn’t control the decision. If Trump wanted to sell, I suspect the business manager would go along with it,” Germain said.
Germain added that Trump will likely seek a bond to pay for the lawsuits before launching an appeal. If Trump doesn’t have the resources to do so, he may be in trouble, Germain said.
“If he is not able to meet the requirements for obtaining a stay pending appeal, then his financial situation would be in serious jeopardy. So I would expect him to [then] consider a bankruptcy filing to stay enforcement while he pursues his appeal,” he said.
Newsweek contacted Trump’s attorney by email on Wednesday, outside normal business hours, to comment on this story.
On February 16, Engoron ruled that Trump will have to pay roughly $355 million in penalties for overinflating the value of his assets.
The judgment is backdated to include interest earned. James’ office said in a statement that the total amount will come to about $450 million.
Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump were each ordered to pay more than $4 million.
Trump, the GOP frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, has maintained his innocence in the case and claimed it was politically motivated.
Update 02/21/24 09:56 a.m ET: This article was updated to clarify the monitor’s role in appointing a business manager.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.