Speculation about how much cash Donald Trump has available to him has been raised again after his failed attempt to halt the collection of the penalties in his civil fraud case.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron recently ordered that Trump pay a $355 million fine, increasing to $454 million with interest, after ruling that the former president filed fraudulent financial statements that inflated the value of his properties and assets for years.
Trump is appealing the decision and has until March 25 to secure a cash bond of the full amount needed to argue against the ruling. If the bond is not paid, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who launched the civil case against the former president, could start retrieving the $454 million. She has previously said her office is prepared to seize Trump’s properties.
Trump’s lawyers previously submitted a request to a New York court that Trump pay a $100 million bond to appeal the decision. Trump’s legal team also suggested that the former president may have to sell some of his real estate assets to pay the almost $500 million bond.
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“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,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
“In the absence of a stay on the terms herein outlined, properties would likely need to be sold to raise capital under exigent circumstances, and there would be no way to recover any property sold following a successful appeal and no means to recover the resulting financial losses from the Attorney General,” they added.
“Thus, Supreme Court and the Attorney General will have succeeded in imposing a punitive and irreversible financial sanction even where Appellants prevail on appeal. Simply put, Appellants would be unable to recover the value of that which was taken by the court and the Attorney General during the pendency of the appeal.”
Judge Anil Singh rejected Trump’s $100 million offer Wednesday and ordered that the former president pay the full penalty or cash bond amount by the original deadline.
Singh did provide Trump some relief by accepting the request to pause the three-year ban Engoron issued that prohibited the former president from pursuing loans from banks in New York, potentially providing the Republican a way to secure the money.
Trump has frequently maintained that he is a billionaire, claiming during his April 2023 deposition that he has “substantially” over $400 million in cash. In October 2023, Forbes estimated Trump’s net worth as $2.6 billion.
In the wake of the request to lower the bond amount to $100 million, a number of Trump critics have speculated on social media that the former president has vastly exaggerated the amount of cash he has available.
The Lincoln Project, a Republican super PAC founded by Trump critics, released a video Wednesday in the wake of the $100 million request that accused the former president of being “broke,” “busted” and a “fraud.”
Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Trump. Is. Broke. It’s always been a shell game.”
Newsweek contacted Trump’s legal team for comment via email.
The court filings do not confirm precisely how much cash Trump has available to him.
In a hearing Wednesday, Trump attorney Chris Kise argued that the issue of trying to come up with almost half a billion dollars in cash is more of a logistical one.
“No one, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, has five hundred million laying around,” Kise said, via The Washington Post.
As The New York Times reported, Trump could also receive a substantial amount of money after the long-delayed merger of Digital World Acquisition Corp. and Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social platform.
Trump’s stake in the merger could be worth up to $4 billion when it is finalized this year, although it will not arrive in time for the March 25 deadline to pay the fraud civil penalty or post the cash bond.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.