Trump has until Monday to come up with the money.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has urged an appeals court to ignore Donald Trump’s latest effort to worm his way out of paying the $464 million disgorgement from his bank fraud trial.
On Wednesday, an attorney for James told the court that Trump’s claims could not be trusted since they were based on sworn statements by Alan Garten, general counsel at the Trump Organization, and Gary Giulietti, one of Trump’s close friends. There’s a precedent to disqualify them—during the trial, Judge Arthur Engoron decided that Giulietti could not be considered a credible witness and argued that Garten had “professional interests in this litigation.”
Garten, however, snapped back at that. “The court found no such thing. The AG statement is reckless and completely untrue,” Garten said in response to the filing, according to The Washington Post.
So far, Trump has tried and failed to pause the rapidly growing interest on the judgment, counteroffering the court a $100 million bond in lieu of the full amount. He has also approached several brokers and 30 suretors for help securing a bond, though it didn’t seem to work out for him, according to a filing by Trump’s attorneys, who admitted that suretors refused to accept Trump’s real estate as collateral. Instead, they would only accept cash to the tune of $1 billion, which Trump said he and his businesses just don’t have.
Kinda makes sense though. If he had physical property worth $500M, they could put a lien on it preventing him from selling it. If he had $500M cash, and used that as collateral, he could just spend it on his other legal issues and the banks would lose out.
He needs $1 Billion so he has some headroom for his other legal troubles to siphon some of it off and still have enough to pay back the bond.