Donald Trump’s three-day deadline to find nearly half a billion dollars or risk seeing his cherished property empire dismantled building by building is creating one of the most extraordinary twists ever seen in a US presidential election campaign.
Trump’s new drama concerns his struggle to come up with a bond to cover $464 million plus interest charges so that he can appeal a civil fraud trial judgment against him, his adult sons and his company. If he can’t somehow find the money by Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James may begin seizing some of Trump’s assets to finance his obligation to the state. She has laid the groundwork with court filings that suggest Trump’s Seven Springs estate and golf course in Westchester County, New York, could be among her first targets.
“The attorney general is ready to go. They are ready to go after his money to try to fulfill the judgment,” Adam Leitman Bailey, a real estate attorney who sued Trump seven times, told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “The question is how hard it is going to be to collect.”
While this is primarily a crisis about Trump’s business and personal wealth, it is creating real political implications given his status as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. No other candidate has ever faced such a distraction in the middle of an election campaign – and that’s separate from the former commander-in-chief’s parallel constellation of criminal cases that will dominate the run-up to Election Day and potentially add to the tumult of his second presidency if he beats President Joe Biden.
Trump’s increasingly alarmed posts on social media on Thursday offered a window into his desperation. And they showed how every one of his cases now has a similar defense. He claims he’s not guilty of breaking the law but is the victim of endless…
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