How Donald Trump’s Net Worth Will Be Impacted by Legal Woes

The payments Donald Trump will have to make from recent lawsuits exceed his liquid assets by $112.3 million, according to Newsweek calculations.

Trump may have to sell personal assets or take out a loan to make the payments.

Forbes estimated that as of September, Trump had some $426 million in cash and liquid assets. That includes $162 million from refinancing a San Francisco hotel and also the sale of his share in a Washington, D.C., hotel.

Trump has been ordered to pay $5 million and $83.3 million from the two E. Jean Carroll lawsuits, respectively, for a combined value of $88.3 million.

He has also been ordered to pay $354.4 million from the New York fraud trial. The judge in that case, Arthur Engoron, ordered that interest be applied retrospectively on those amounts. That will bring the total Trump will have to pay to about $450 million, New York Attorney General Letitia James said.

That comes to a combined lawsuit total of $538.3 million ($450 million plus $88.3 million), which exceeds the value of his $426 million liquid assets by $112.3 million.

Newsweek reached out to Trump’s attorney via email for comment.

The September estimates from Forbes said that Trump has $640 million in personal assets, including his liquid holdings, which lie outside the Trump Organization’s real estate. Those assets include his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, a $19 million mansion across the road from Mar-a-Lago that he purchased from his sister in 2018, his $52 million penthouse at the Trump Tower in New York, and his $25 million estate in Bedford, New York.

The lawsuits would drain his $426 million liquid assets and, in addition, may force Trump to sell property worth $112.3 million, bringing his personal assets down to $91.7 million, unless he can get a loan to cover the lawsuit payments.

But that, too, will require repayment with interest.

In September, Forbes estimated Trump’s net worth at $2.6 billion, including personal assets and his share of the Trump Organization. Trump’s net worth is largely made up of Trump Organization real estate assets, including $870 million from his golf clubs and resorts, $690 million from New York City properties and $190 million from other properties outside of New York City. The ex-president also has an estimated $190 million from his social media and brand businesses.

His combined net worth would, therefore, be reduced from $2.6 billion to $2.051 billion if he is unsuccessful on appeal.

On February 26, Engoron ruled that Trump would have to pay roughly $354.4 million in penalties for overinflating the value of his assets. The former president’s two eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, were ordered to each pay more than $4 million.

Trump, the current Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, has maintained his innocence in the case and claimed it was politically motivated.

On January 26, a New York City jury ordered that the former president must pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll, a retired journalist, for defamatory statements made in 2019, specifically that Carroll was lying about allegations that he sexually assaulted her inside a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s.

That amount includes $7.3 million in compensatory damages, $11 million for reputational repair, and $65 million in punitive damages.

Trump was previously ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in damages last year in another civil defamation trial stemming from a denial he made about her claims in 2022. He has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing and has said he will appeal the verdict.