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The State of New York would like its money now, please.
Last week Justice Arthur Engoron entered his judgment ordering Trump to pay upwards of $450 million for running a business based on fraudulent claims about his own fabulous wealth. As Attorney General Letitia James gleefully noted, the meter is still running, racking up an additional $114,553.04 in interest each and every day. And she’s vowed to seize Trump’s buildings toot sweet if he doesn’t pay up.
Unsurprisingly, Trump would like not that. But absent intercession from a higher power, he’s either going to have to post a bond for the entire judgment amount or face collection efforts even as he appeals. And so Trump made an emergency visit to the Holy Church of the First Judicial Department this morning, in hopes that it would stay the bond requirement pending appeal. He was even willing to make a $100 million sacrifice to fend off the order forcing him to kick up almost half a billion dollars and surrender control of his company.
“The purpose of an appeal bond is to maintain the status quo during the appeal and to ensure sufficient resources are available to satisfy any judgment affirmed,” he wheedled, adding that “any judgment affirmed by this Court would be adequately secured by the precise oversight the Attorney General sought and has relied on during the pendency of these entire proceedings, augmented by a $100 million undertaking Appellants plan to post forthwith.”
That last bit was reference to retired Judge Barbara Jones, whom the court appointed as a monitor at the Trump Organization last year to make sure it didn’t do any more fraud. Just a month ago the defendants lashed out, accusing Judge Jones of nitpicking their books to justify her own “exorbitant fees” and to “fill the gaping hole in the Attorney General’s case, namely, that there is no basis to support continued oversight.” [Emphasis original, presumably since Trump’s lawyers are too chickenshit to actually imitate their client’s random capitalization style in a legal filing.]
But now the Trump boys point to their kindly babysitter as proof that the appellate court can stay the judgment, including the part which removes them from leadership of the company, without fear that they’ll return to their wicked ways.
The document also tacitly conceded that Trump, who claims to live in a house worth $1.5 billion, doesn’t have the cash to pay up.
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. Thus, Supreme Court and the Attorney General will have succeeded in imposing a punitive and irreversible financial sanction even where Appellants prevail on appeal.
The brief also displayed the signature culture war goofiness that’s required in every Trump filing, with its warning that if Trump has to pay a bond, the city of New York will suffer.
“The Judgment and its effects on commerce in the State have also been the subject of widespread public criticism,” they intoned ominously, directing the court to an attached “sampling of news articles on that topic.”
Those “articles” included various conservative opinion sites like Newsmax and The American Spectator, as well as tweets from a bunch of conservative weirdos claiming to be truckers who refuse to bring loads into the city until their hero is liberated.
Trump’s lawyers were in court this morning arguing their emergency motion before Associate Justice Anil C. Singh, where they decried the unfairness of the ruling.
“No one, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, has five hundred million laying around,” his attorney Chris Kise scoffed.
But somehow, Justice Singh failed to be persuaded — or at least, not in the way that they most hoped. He granted a temporary stay as to the parts of the order which kicked them out of the company and barred them from borrowing money, but refused to stay collections:
Over opposition, appellants are granted an interim stay of the branches of Supreme Court’s judgment, entered February 23, 2024, which enjoined the individual defendants from serving in the financial control function of any New York corporation or similar business entity registered and/or licensed in New York State , and/or serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York, and which enjoined certain individual and corporate defendants from applying for loans from any financial institution chartered by or registered with the New York State Department of Financial Services for a of three (3) years . The interim stay is denied as to the enforcement of monetary judgment and the installation of an Independent Director of Compliance.
On the plus side, they can do business with someone willing to write them that half a billion dollar bond now! Assuming there’s someone out there willing to lend half a billion dollars to people who could lose control of their company in the blink of an eye when a panel gets around to reviewing this interim grant relief.
LOL.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
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