Letitia James Trying to Block Trump Appeal

New York Attorney General Letitia James has Donald Trump on the ropes and she is not about to back down now.

Trump and his attorneys are desperately trying to delay Trump’s judgment payment until after the appeals process has been exhausted.

With Trump thus far being unable to find a lender to back the bond, and the deadline fast approaching, James is now making her case that Trump should have to pay the judgment by Monday or face liens on his properties and forfeit his right of appeal.

Baffling

With a judgment this size, I find it odd that the court would not automatically stay the judgment until the appeals process has played out.

This is nearly half a billion dollars, so we are not talking about a small judgment where you have to skip a rent payment to settle the judgment.

The court knows that if Trump cannot get a bond, he will likely have to sell properties off to pay the judgment.

If Trump cannot do that and fails to pay, he not only loses his right to appeal the case but also loses all the properties with a lien against them.

The real concern here is the low valuations that James obtained for Trump’s properties.

In the real world, Mar-a-Lago would more than cover this tab, but James had the property valued at less than $30 million.

Point being, she may be able to completely wipe out Trump’s real estate holdings if he cannot post the bond.

While Trump’s legal team has argued it is virtually impossible to secure such a bond, Dennis Fan, senior assistant solicitor general in the attorney general’s office, is not buying it.

Fan stated, “Defendants’ new factual allegations and legal arguments fail to support their extraordinary request for a stay based on a bond or deposit of less than one-fourth of the money-judgment amount.”

Fan further argued that Trump could secure smaller bonds from various lenders to limit their risk, but he is choosing not to go that route.

Trump’s attorneys have also argued that some of his properties cannot be put up as collateral, another argument that was dismissed by Fan.

Fan stated, “Defendants’ allegations thus boil down to the proposition that sureties have been unwilling to accept Mr. Trump’s real-estate holdings as collateral in this case.

“Yet defendants supply no documentary evidence that demonstrates precisely what real property they offered to sureties, on what terms that property was offered, or precisely why the sureties were unwilling to accept the assets.

“As far as the Court can infer, sureties may have refused to accept defendants’ specific holdings as collateral because using Mr. Trump’s real estate will generally need ‘a property appraisal’ and his holdings are not nearly as valuable as defendants claim.”

Trump is clearly not going to get any breaks from James’ office, and he has yet to have a sympathetic judge in the case.

At this point, it is just a waiting game to see if Trump can pull a rabbit out of his hat or, more precisely, $500 million.