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On Fox News today, Trump's attorney Alina Habba was asked the softball of all softball questions.

FOX: "Is there any effort on the part of your team to secure this money through another country, Saudi Arabia or Russia?"

HABBA: "I can't speak about strategy."

Umm.

The easy and correct answer is, "no".

Dementia Don's got, what, five days or so to come up with over $400 million before his assets go on the chopping block? You better believe he's going to take money from anywhere and anyone who'll offer it.

And you better believe he's the worst security risk in the history of the country.

Hell, he'd sell Eric if he could only remember his name.

You better believe he's going to take money from anywhere and anyone who'll offer it.


Always the case with the great grifter.

Dementia Don's got, what, five days or so to come up with over $400 million before his assets go on the chopping block? You better believe he's going to take money from anywhere and anyone who'll offer it.

Trump can apparently get out of having to pay if he declares bankruptcy, but he has said that might hurt his re-election chances. However, he seems to have had no problem bankrupting business of his before now.

Hmm, is Manafort onboard yet? Perhaps with his shady foreign connections he can find the money?

HABBA: "I can't speak about strategy."

Umm.

The easy and correct answer is, "no".

The easy answer is "no." The correct answer is, "I have no idea. I'm Donald Trump's lawyer because I look like what he thinks a lawyer should look like on TV, not because I'm good at it. The serious people who handle the actual money for him would never let me be part of that decision-making process."

g0177325: Trump can apparently get out of having to pay if he declares bankruptcy...

Generally, nope. Section 523 of the United States Bankruptcy Code exempts from discharge “any debt ... for money, property, services, or an extension, renewal, or refinancing of credit, to the extent obtained by ... false pretenses, a false representation, or actual fraud.”

https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/don...

Hmm, is Manafort onboard yet? Perhaps with his shady foreign connections he can find the money?

That might be the whole point of bringing him back in to the fold.

Generally, nope. Section 523 of the United States Bankruptcy Code exempts from discharge “any debt ... for money, property, services, or an extension, renewal, or refinancing of credit, to the extent obtained by ... false pretenses, a false representation, or actual fraud.”

The idea of bankruptcy would not relieve him of the obligation, but it would buy time for him to come up with the bond; the court would have to be sympathetic to seeing that lenders/bonders could not use collateralized property to secure a bond, nor would any liquid assets be as easily attachable.

It would be a strategy of further delay, not of discharge of the debt.

The correct answer is, "I have no idea. I'm Donald Trump's lawyer because I look like what he thinks a lawyer should look like on TV, not because I'm good at it. The serious people who handle the actual money for him would never let me be part of that decision-making process."

trump's financial advisors collude with his legal advisors on what trump thinks he can get away with (or what they propose to stay in his good graces).
this was clear from the guilty trump.org accountant case, although very little of that had criminal repercussions to don himself (as usual).

on both financial and and legal advice, trump gets what he (or the PAC) pays for.

trump's financial advisors collude with his legal advisors on what trump thinks he can get away with (or what they propose to stay in his good graces).
this was clear from the guilty trump.org accountant case, although very little of that had criminal repercussions to don himself (as usual).

No doubt. But I doubt that Habba herself would be included in these specific discussions. She hasn't proven herself to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Trump likes to pick his lawyers based, in part, on who can go on TV and look like his idea of what a lawyer should look like. But I suspect his financial advisors, when picking which of his legal team they want to consult with, aren't going to pick her.

If there were conversations with foreign nationals/governments to try to get the money, I'd be shocked if anyone kept Habba in the loop. She doesn't need to know, and her opinion isn't something they'd care to get.

It would be a strategy of further delay, not of discharge of the debt.

And delay is the name of the game. If Trump can get elected POTUS he feels he can make all his troubles go away.

Which is probably why he sounds more desperate and unhinged all the time. He MUST win at any cost.

And delay is the name of the game. If Trump can get elected POTUS he feels he can make all his troubles go away.

Which is probably why he sounds more desperate and unhinged all the time. He MUST win at any cost.

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From this vantage point in the proceedings, it would be a fascinating parlor game to try to estimate the true sources and magnitudes of the fears driving Trump. Psychologically, he is clearly one seriously defective carbon-based life form. For someone with his particular set of neuroses, the fear of being shown to the world to be far less wealthy than he has claimed to be his entire adult life is clearly capable of driving extreme risk taking to prevent that outcome. It also REQUIRES enormous mental energy to be continually exerted against reality to keep recognition of those consequences from overtaking the effort needed to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

But his behvavior could be driven by another fear... The fear of the two financial settlements triggering such massive shuffling throughout his portfolio that it exposes other financial fraud triggering more criminal cases against him. Two things are worth pondering in this area.

First, Trump is likely confused about assets he owns OUTRIGHT versus assets he owns SHARES of. For someone as egotistical and divorced from reality as he is, it's easy to adopt the mental shorthand that concludes "if my name's on the building, I own it." Well, there's a big difference between owning one hundred percent of ten properties each worth $100,000,000 dollars -- congratualations, you're a billionaire -- and a ten percent share of ten properties worth $100,000,000 dollars -- congratulations, you're a centibillionaire. Big difference. Especially when your need to appear far richer than you are requires you to leverage your tenth of a billion in wealth to extremes which means you might be worth $100 million but you have virtually ZERO liquidity. And if you "own" a ten percent share of those assets but actually owe money on them, then you're not really event a centibillionaire.

When you're worth $100 million, have expensive tastes, zero liquidity AND you are consistently bad at operating businesses, you burn through lots of cash and your finances get worse, not better. You become more desperate each time loans come due and require refinancing, leading you to adopt more shady practices in an industry (real estate) seemingly optimized for financial fraud and work with darker and darker tiers of funding sources to continue funding your financial charade.

This is precisely the position Trump and his family are in. He has had $550 million in civil judgments levied against him. He needs to go through the motions of appealing the cases to delay an eventual reckoning but must cough up the cash (or some portion of it as a bond) in order to even start an appeal. His financial arrangments are so convoluted that NO ONE can untangle them in thirty days to even identify what could be sold to begin collecting the judgment and he isn't even likely a majority owner in any of the assets avaialable. Any attempt to begin cashing out one of these assets is likely to trigger an avalanche of debt covenant violations on other assets that will make him instantly insolvent.

Also keep in mind that dating from the early 1990s as his father was dying, Trump made an attempt at cheating his siblings from their share of inheritence from his father's fortune. Even his Alzheimers addled father somehow recognized something was afoul with paperwork Trump tried to trick him into signing, refused to sign it and led his wife to contact the other siblings who then found out about the ploy. At that point, the siblings all realized that the set of businesses had already been redirecting wealth out of Trump Senior's business entities through shell janitorial service companies in New Jersey into Trump's entities to avoid estate taxes and all of the siblings at that point signed on to continue that scam. At the time the father died, his business, previously valued by the Trump family at $1.3 billion had been hollowed out completely and was worth a mere $30 million dollars.

With that track record of fraud and corruption, if the mental energy being exerted by Donald Trump to suppress recognition of the consequences of these facts coming to light could be harnessed somehow, we could eliminate fossil fuels overnight.


WTH

WatchingTheHerd: His financial arrangements are so convoluted that NO ONE can untangle them in thirty days to even identify what could be sold to begin collecting the judgment and he isn't even likely a majority owner in any of the assets available.

His financial disclosure forms (from August 2023) are available online. Basically, he seems to keep remortgaging his properties, paying off one loan by taking out another loan to pay off the existing loan.

For example, he had a mortgage loan on Trump Tower for "over" $50,000,000 from Ladder Capital Finance that was paid off in Feb 2022 which was replaced by a mortgage loan from Axos Bank in 2022 for "over" $50,000,000 with a 2032 maturity date. Go here and then to page 58 in the PDF: https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploa...

What the AG could do (I believe) is sell off any property, first satisfy any mortgage holder(s), and then direct any remaining proceeds toward settling his obligation.

Also, he keeps saying he cannot get a loan of "that size". Well, why not get several smaller loans?

And hey, I thought that guy was a billionaire with at least $400 million in cash (that's what he said in court anyway).

But no, he's not going to file for bankruptcy... that would destroy him both personally and politically.

His previous four (I think) bankruptcies haven't affected him politically. Personally, he is already a hot mess (in my non-professional opinion), so not sure that will make much difference.

I would think if he has $400M liquid, he should be able to get a bond for the balance (maybe $150M?). If he can sucker someone into trusting him to post that for him.

I would think if he has $400M liquid, he should be able to get a bond for the balance (maybe $150M?).

That's a big "if" right there. He probably doesn't have $400M liquid. If nothing else, at least $100M of whatever liquid assets he does have are probably already encumbered to support the Carroll bond.

What's interesting is that while he's right that it's difficult to generate liquidity from real estate on very short notice, this isn't entirely a short notice situation. The trial started in October. The court granted summary judgment in favor of the state in a pre-trial ruling in September. Trump and his legal team have known for half a year that a likely outcome of this case was an adverse judgment for more than $100 million.

Given that, his legal and financial teams could have - and should have - started the process of obtaining mortgages or loans against his real estate holdings, so that he would have the liquidity to bond the very foreseeable adverse judgment. Now, Trump is notoriously a "don't nobody tell me no bad news" kind of person, so perhaps he was unwilling to prepare for that contingency. But it does raise the possibility that he was unable to do anything like that. That he's so leveraged that while he might have a billion or more in net worth in his real estate holdings, it's spread around so many highly mortgaged property that none of those assets have enough equity to support an additional loan.

IOW, he not only doesn't have $400M liquid - he doesn't have $400M in mortgageable assets.

IOW, he not only doesn't have $400M liquid - he doesn't have $400M in mortgageable assets.

Correct. I made this point back on 2/28 when he started attempting to barter a deal on the mere $93 million dollar judgment. If you're having to dicker on $93 million, it's pretty clear you don't have $455 million either.

https://watchingtheherd.blogspot.com/2024/02/trump...

I'm going to step away for a bit and see about obtaining trademark / servicemark protections on the term "centibillionaire." I think it could really take off in the next week or so. LOL


WTH

So he lied in court about how much liquid assets he has. Perjury?

Sounds like his net worth isn't much better than mine (I have no debt, but I also don't claim to have 9 figures in assets). After all, "net" is assets minus liabilities. If he's mortgaged to the hilt, as you suggest, then even if he liquidated the holdings, he'd have to pay any mortgage holder first. That might not leave much. Especially if some of those assets were inflated in value to obtain larger loans. He -conceivably- could owe more than the properties are worth, and have a negative net.

If that's the case, what then? There is no debtor's prison (fortunately). What recourse would plaintiffs have?

am also curious whether his testimony regarding ~$400M liquidity has any actual repercussions.

Sounds like his net worth isn't much better than mine (I have no debt, but I also don't claim to have 9 figures in assets). After all, "net" is assets minus liabilities. If he's mortgaged to the hilt, as you suggest, then even if he liquidated the holdings, he'd have to pay any mortgage holder first.

He might still have a pretty significant net worth and still not be able to get any financing. You typically can't finance 100% of the value of a property. So if you've mortgaged 75% or 80% or whatever of the value of the building, it's hard to get a loan on that last bit of equity. So if he's got a portfolio of assets that's worth <made up number> one billion dollars, then it's likely that at least 10-20% of that is equity net of encumbrances - but which can't be loaned on.

But his behavior could be driven by another fear... The fear of the two financial settlements triggering such massive shuffling throughout his portfolio that it exposes other financial fraud triggering more criminal cases against him.

Except...he's continued to defame Carroll even after two judgements against him for it. So he's either not concerned, or he has no control over what words come out of his mouth (ya think?). His only hope seems to be to get himself elected President and try to shut down all the cases against him (which would really require being a Dictator). He's nothing if not aggressive, so he seems to be putting all his eggs in that basket.

Well, even if he won, he could only delay a lot of the actions against him. He might be able to make the federal go away permanently (or, in four years, they could pick up the charges again?). But the various state charges won't go away. At most he can delay for four years, but he can't pardon himself from any of those actions. It's an open question if he could pardon himself from federal charges (that would end up in SCOTUS, I'm sure).

Also keep in mind that dating from the early 1990s as his father was dying, Trump made an attempt at cheating his siblings from their share of inheritance from his father's fortune. Even his Alzheimers addled father somehow recognized something was afoul with paperwork Trump tried to trick him into signing, refused to sign it and led his wife to contact the other siblings who then found out about the ploy. At that point, the siblings all realized that the set of businesses had already been redirecting wealth out of Trump Senior's business entities through shell janitorial service companies in New Jersey into Trump's entities to avoid estate taxes and all of the siblings at that point signed on to continue that scam. At the time the father died, his business, previously valued by the Trump family at $1.3 billion had been hollowed out completely and was worth a mere $30 million dollars

SNIP In December 2003, it was reported that Trump's four surviving children would sell the apartments they acquired in 1997 to an investment group led by Rubin Schron, priced at $600 million;[143] the sale occurred in May 2004. The 2016 leak of Donald Trump's tax information from 2005, which showed an income of $153 million, prompted The New York Times to investigate, leading to the 2018 exposé.[120][u] The Times reported that the properties sold in 2004 were valued over 16 times their previously declared worth.[102] Fred and Mary reportedly provided their children with over $1 billion altogether, which should have been taxed at the rate of 55% for gifts and inheritances (over $550 million), but records show that a total of only $52.2 million (about 5%) was paid.[102] According to New York State law, individuals can be prosecuted on the basis of intentional tax evasion if a fraudulent return form can be produced as evidence; the statute of limitations does not apply in such cases.[145] By February 1, 2019, Maryanne Trump Barry was being investigated for possible judicial misconduct regarding the schemes, but this was mooted later in the month due to her retirement.[146]SNIP ~Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Trump

Avoided 500 million in dubious inheritance tax schemes, and Maryanne retired to avoid prosecution. I wonder what Donald was trying to get Fred to sign?

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