Judgment in Trump civil fraud case officially entered at $464 million

return2ozma@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 365 points –
Judgment in Trump civil fraud case officially entered at $464 million
nbcnews.com
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an amount that will grow by over $111,000 a day until it's paid.

its like the cherry on top

That's about $1.25 per second.

Wait $1.25 or $0.125?

My cynicism took over my math center and I thought he was getting away with something. Edited.

A buck and a quarter a second is seriously huge money. Dude's fucked and I'm loving it.

More money he doesn't pay

Letitia James just said the other day she'll seize his real estate if she has to

You'll have to Lysol the crap out of those buildings. Blegh!

im curious to know what happens when he doesnt pay. can they go after all assets, including those not in new york?

To my knowledge, New York can seize assets in NY and lien everything else.

I could be wrong tho.

In a normal civil case once judgment has entered you receive an execution, which allows you to seize property in the state.

In order to seize property in another state you would have to domesticate the judgment in the new state, then get an execution from that state to seize property. Domestication of a judgment is typically straightforward and simple, but it depends upon the state, some are more arduous than others.

Ianal - but I believe you can’t get a re-trial if you don’t submit the money or a bond. So somebody is going to pay it, even if they have to use rubles or diamonds

its the appeal process that cannot begin until theres some bond posted thats a decent percentage, if not all of it. plus interest.

It is 125% of the total judgement.

It depends on the jurisdiction. In some there is some judicial discretion. I saw a case where the amount was 111.1%. I am not admitted in New York and am too lazy to look up their rules. Usually the amount is enough to pay the whole judgment plus all costs (which shouldn't be a very high percentage of such a huge judgment, lol).

One of my clients deposited the judgment amount plus court ordered costs in cash in an escrow account of the Court pending the appeal. The prevailing party received the judgment plus the interest the deposit earned (like an IOLTA).

Michael Popok from Meidas Touch said it was 125% in NY. That's where I got that figure from. I find him to generally be pretty reliable.

It can be reduced, but there is no good reason to do so here.

Sure, it's gonna get paid, by the Republican party and their donors (and maybe an oligarch or Crown Prince too).

Just not DJT. And why would he? If you can get rubes and dictators to pay, you might as well.

NY doesn't care.

Ms. James has already said that NY will seize his buildings one by one and auction them off until the debt is paid.

He could just set up fake auctioneers to raise the prices to crazy values and pay off the fine with Russian backed money?

Really, an inability to pay will be far more damaging to his campaign than a criminal conviction or jail time. Let's see how it goes.

That presumes his pithed supporters gave a crap about anything but overt racism and lies.

Spoiler: They do not

It's a fair point. I think the key in political contests is to win over undecided voters. You will never win over the Maga zombies. You probably won't win over "my family votes Republican" voters. But there's a chance with the almost impossible to understand undecided voters.

The people who thought "Trump is a businessman and we need a better economy" or "Trump is a billionaire so isn't subject to corruption" might see him differently now. Both of these takes are laughably naive but undecided voters tend to also be low information, last minute people. They get a vague sense of things and go with that. Seeing Trump humiliated on a money issue might do it.

That's just one scenario.

In some purple districts the vote margins are really narrow. A few thousand voters going D instead of R can do it. It's why third party candidates are so damaging.

Yeah the motivated reasoning in trump supporters is strong.

how so?

If he's convicted or imprisoned, his supporters will just consider him a martyr, the victim of a political witch hunt. If it turns out he just can't pay, it shows him to be the loser he is, and reveals his supposedly amazing business sense as a lie.

That’s been out in the open for quite some time, but I do not see his numbers dropping. Why would they not use that as a win - not paying the fake trial money! Witch-hunt !!1!

They will seize his assets if he doesn't pay. He has 30 days.

It will still be “our guy” against the government and wicked judges. I can’t see it hurting him at all in the race. Someone will front the money - it’s a golden opportunity for a lot of high stakes players to “save” him

Would be a great opportunity for Russia to funnel the money to him via some stooge or another. Trump's so on sale, even compared to how on sale he normally is

This take is missing the point a little. The undecided voter is where this matters and you won't see them moving polls. Some districts that affect the outcome are very close calls we where a few thousand undecided going D instead of R can make a difference.

Edit - sorry, was trying to reply to a comment higher up about losing support.

He will just turn it around on how the DA is doing the bidding of the Biden regime to try and take him out because everyone knows he like money and people know what it’s like when the government tries to take more money from you than they should and that is what Biden is trying to do. But we’re not going to let him. You fine patriotic are going to make sure it doesn’t happen by giving to the true patriot fund.

The bond will likely be very costly. While courts have discretion in setting exactly how much is required for a bond, New York courts typically require up to 120% of the judgment, including all pre-judgment interest. That means he could have to post a bond for well over $500 million.

No problem, no problem. The guy’s “a billionaire” right? Okay, he pays the court what it’s owed, and, uh, he’s still got a cool half a billion to, y’know buy chewing gum and fly his little plane around and that. Piece o’ cake.

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Interestingly, I imagine this man would not even get basic security clearance with this level of debt and high risk of being manipulated (by others offering to pay debt). Yet he's still a candidate for president, interesting....

Even the military will disqualify you if you have too much debt because you become a target of the enemy.

$464 million: the cost of one and a half Russian A-50 early warning planes - of which Ukraine just shot down one today - OR the cost of forgiving 12,500 student loans (out of 43 million Americans with student loans).

Or a fraction of the cost many American families had to bitterly gulp because of that asshole's lies during the pandemic.

Waiiiit they shot another one down today!?!?!?!? Aren't there only like 3 or 4 and they shot one down a month or so ago

Edit: well damn they did! Fuck ya. Article I saw says they had 9 of these, 2 of which have now been shot down, and they're never all active at once so that's a huge blow.

So how does this end?

Like.. what happens when he fails to pay? Does he get arrested?

No, as we do not have "debtor's prison" in the United States....at least not officially. There are certainly ways the system works around that.

However, in this case the state will file a lien against all of his properties, and then begin the legal process of recouping the funds from the judgement if he defaults.

We don't have debtors prison for the wealthy, but we do for the poor

That's what I meant by the "not officially" and "the system works around that" parts 🙃

but we do for the poor

Trump is about to be poor

He’s about to need to sell off a large percentage of his holdings, but he won’t be poor by any stretch. He’ll still likely be a billionaire, with a B. Even low estimates put his worth at somewhere around $2B.

And losing a quarter of that to a legal decision is a huge hit, but he’ll still have $1.5B in worth afterwards. Even if he did nothing with it and just let it accrue interest, he and his entire family would still be set for life. I hate the man, but this isn’t going to be what ruins him. This is one slice of a very large pie. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

it’s unlikely he’s even a billionaire now, as that valuation is entirely based off of what now is revealed to be entirely bullshit estimations pulled directly out of his ass of his worth. the fact that he cant’ even come up with a fraction of that in cash (he could barely come up with $5M for the first E. Jean Carroll judgement and is struggling to produce the $84M for the second) speaks volumes to that.

And, while he s certainly going to have to liquidate a great deal of his holdings to produce that cash necessary to pay for these judgements, it may turn out that:

  1. the percentage of his ownership of many of his real estate holdings is not sufficient to cover the total sum of the judgements against him and,
  2. he may already be leveraged on those holdings (mortgages, etc.) to banks, etc. so that their value is even less than his ownership stake, making them worthless in any sale.
  3. he may already have other undisclosed financial obligations which further impede his current financial standing.

the fact is: nobody knows how much Trump is truthfully worth but Trump. even he may not know, however, we are all about to find out, at long last.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


A clerk in New York has officially entered a more than $464 million fraud judgment against former President Donald Trump and top executives at his company — an amount that will grow by over $111,000 a day until it's paid.

If he does not do so, the New York attorney general's office will be able to begin collection proceedings against Trump and his co-defendants in the civil fraud case.

Trump's lawyers had sought to delay the judgment from being entered, presumably to allow them more time to line up financing for the bond, but Engoron rejected that request Thursday.

“You have failed to explain, much less justify, any basis for a stay,” Engoron told Trump attorney Clifford S. Robert in an email before he signed the judgment.

In a ruling last week following a months-long trial, Engoron found Trump and his top executives had intentionally engaged in a massive and long-running scheme to improperly inflate his assets in financial statements so he could take advantage of favorable loan and insurances rates he wasn't actually entitled to.

He found their "refusal to admit error — indeed, to continue it, according to the Independent Monitor — constrains this Court to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained.”


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