Former President Donald Trump needs to arrange a $454 million bond to comply with a New York Court ruling in less than a week, but the presumptive Republican nominee says he can’t find a company to put up the bond.
Trump’s lawyers are asking an appeals court to stay the judgment, but the clock is ticking.
How did Trump come to owe the state of New York some $454 million?
This is the ruling that Judge Arthur Engoron issued last month, after finding that Donald, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr. along with Trump Organization employees, engaged in a decade-long conspiracy to lie about the value of their assets.
In New York, if you make money by persistently committing fraud, you owe the ill-gotten portion back to the state. In this case, Judge Engoron determined that Donald Trump made over $350 million more than he should have if he’d been honest and when you add in interest, you get to $454 million.
Trump doesn’t have to actually pay that money now, but he has to get a company to make a guarantee to the court that they will pay the money if he loses his appeal. That’s the bond part.
But to get a bond, you have to put up assets, and in a court filing Monday Trump lawyers said they’d approached 30 companies but that getting a bond was a quote “practical impossibility,” because they’d need a billion dollars in cash, which they don’t have.
Read more at NPR.org
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