Former US President Donald Trump speaks to the media after voting at a polling station at the Morton and Barbara Mandel Entertainment Center on March 19, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida.
Joe Rydell | Getty Images
Donald Trump faces serious risk that New York's attorney general will begin trying to collect on a $454 million civil commercial fraud judgment against him on Monday unless an appeals court gives the former president a last-minute reprieve.
Trump's son Eric, one of the defendants in the fraud case, accused Attorney General Letitia James on Sunday of trying to bankrupt his father with the ruling.
Donald Trump's lawyers have said he is unable to afford an appeal bond that would prevent the attorney general from collecting the judgment as he seeks to overturn the fraud ruling — and James told the appeals court last week that it should deny his request to temporarily stop the ruling from taking effect.
“They're trying to deprive him of his money, they want to bankrupt him, and they want to hurt him badly,” Eric Trump said in an interview with Fox News.
“It's going to backfire, because he's going to win the presidency in November, and everyone in this country globally knows exactly what these people are doing,” Eric said.
Eric also said, “No one has ever seen a bond this big.”
“Everyone when I came to them said, 'Can I get half a billion dollars in bonds?' … [T]Hey they were laughing. “They were laughing,” Eric said.
Eric's complaint came days after news that James' office had filed a massive fraud judgment with the county clerk's office in Westchester County, New York. Filing is required if James is to move to seize Trump's golf course and Seven Springs property in that county to partially satisfy the judgment.
Donald Trump, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Eric, and his other adult son, Donald Trump Jr., were found liable for fraud at the Trump Organization along with two company executives after a trial in Manhattan Supreme Court. James's office was the plaintiff in the case.
Last month, Judge Arthur Engoron found that the defendants fraudulently inflated the stated value of Trump's assets to increase his purported net worth and obtain more favorable loan terms for Trump Organization properties. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have run their father's company since he was elected president in 2016.
Trump Sr. is considered liable for most of the $464 million in debt and interest ordered by Engoron in damages in the case. However, Trump's children were ordered to pay $4 million each.
Donald Trump asked a mid-level appeals court last week to temporarily halt the ruling, and his lawyers said it had proven “impossible” for him to obtain an appeal.
Such a bond would ensure that the state obtains the judgment if Trump loses his appeal in the case and is unable to satisfy it.
Trump's lawyers said the escrow companies wanted him to receive up to $1 billion in cash or cash equivalents before they would consider securing surety on appeal in the case.
The lawyers said in a lawsuit that more than 30 companies approached about obtaining a bond refused to accept the properties as collateral.
If the appeals court does not grant Trump a temporary waiver, he can ask the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, to grant him one. However, it is not clear whether Trump will achieve much success at this level.
Monday is the first day James can begin the process of seizing Trump's property to satisfy the ruling without a court order preventing her from doing so.
Losers in civil cases in New York must routinely post an appeal bond or be held accountable for the judgments against them while they appeal the judgment.
