A New York judge on Friday formally ordered Donald Trump to pay $454 million, including interest, a move that will give the former president one month to post nearly half a billion dollars to appeal the fraud verdict.
Judge Arthur Engoron’s signed judgment was posted to the court docket Friday, one week after he found Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump liable for fraud in the civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letita James.
Once Trump and the others are served with the judgment, the 30-day clock for them to file an appeal starts. During that period Trump will need to put up cash or post bond to cover the $355 million and additional roughly $100 million in interest he was ordered to pay. The sons were each ordered to pay $4 million back in gains they improperly received because of the fraud. The judge also banned the Trumps from serving as officers of a business entity in New York for several years.
If he can’t, he doesn’t get to appeal. Putting up the money is a prerequisite to an appeal. If he chooses not to appeal, or can’t put the money in escrow, then the judgment is final and the court starts taking other means to actually collect the judgment, or as much as it can.
It seems likely to me that he will not be able to appeal, and that furthermore the court will not be able to collect the full judgment amount for the plaintiffs, and in that case they’ll turn him upside down and shake him until every quarter falls out of his pockets.
I agree. I don’t think he will appeal.
If he were “very confident” of an easy win then he might put up the money and appeal, but I don’t think anyone has any confidence that an appeal would be successful.
That being the case, the better move might be to string out payments, hope to become POTUS and just kinda authoritarian your way out of it.
Regardless, it’s delightful to finally see some consequences beginning to coalesce.
This is the entirety of his plan.
Can we televise that, put it on pay-per-view, and use the proceeds to pay down the national debt?
I can only imagine what his hair will end up looking like.
Like that, but not cute?
Christ id pay $39.99 a month to watch that
I’m not familiar with this area of law. What’s the reasoning behind this rule? From my naive perspective, it seems like whether or not an appeal is justified is independent of whether or not the defendant can afford to pay the full judgement.
Maybe to avoid having the defendant spend all their money appealing the judgment, which in case of a negative result could impact their ability to pay the fine.
Because otherwise everyone would just appeal every verdict for years just to delay payment. “Skin in the game” ffs.
If you didn’t have to pay first, then there would be a financial incentive to appeal even if you don’t think you can win - just to delay payment.
Make appellant’s pay first to remove the financial incentive to appeal.
Honestly it’s a good question and I’d also like to know the answer.
I know it’s not the same, but I’ve had to pay tickets before challenging them in court, too. If you win, you get it back.
Annoying af when you’re broke.
Well if you ask the banks he’s got at least a bazillion dollars worth of property. And if you ask the IRS he has at least fifty dollars worth of property.
I read the other day that he may declare personal bankruptcy to delay payment. Then he can cry to his followers for more money.
“I had to do it to fight the Commie Nazi Demo-RATS!”
“SEND ME YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY GRANDMA”
They can’t send him money, they’re supposed to be using their money for ammo and guns for the upcoming war. At least that’s what my lunatic coworker says.
He is almost certainly moving every dime he can move to offshore accounts or aliases not in his name to shield as much as he can. But that just means every property with Trump on it is probably going to foreclosed.
That’s just not how Trump rolls though.
He cares a lot more about being perceived to have money than he does about actually having money.
He would do anything and everything to avoid the perception that he is broke.
Even he probably understands he can’t pony up the cash to appeal and worse still if he does present the money and loses, he also loses the money. He 110% would rather look broke than pay a bill, let alone pay a bill on time. Hence why he’s probably moving what ever liquidity he has where state and feds don’t have jurisdiction to seize it. And then if he gets called out on it he just brags to his cult… I mean supporters, that he outsmarted the govt and kept his money while refusing to pay what he will call an illegal or corrupt fine.