The Hill is reporting on a comment Trump made in a campaign appearance in Iowa stating he has $100 million dollars in legal bills.

It's cost me a couple of billion dollars to be a politician. Everyone else makes, they make [money]. I said, 'No, we can't do that.' I could have made a fortune. The countries are coming [and saying,] 'We'd like to build a job and we'd like to have you involved.' Billions. I say, I tell my kids, 'Sorry, kids, we can't do it. I'm president.' I respected the office.

And of course, then they made it much worse with legal fees. I have $100 million worth of legal fees. And they're doing good. At least I have good lawyers, because you can spend $100 million and have lousy lawyers too. It happens.

$100 million in legal fees?

I've had electricity at my house for the last 240 months. I don't say I have $18,720 in electric bills. It's an expected recurring charge that's paid every month. I have a $78 dollar electric bill -- my most recent bill waiting to be paid.

Most of Trump's legal battles don't involve civil lawsuits with him going after other parties for civil damages. In that kind of case, the plaintiff might be generating millions in legal FEES that the lawyers racking up those bills plan on writing off after they collect TENS of millions in damages.

Trump's problems are predominately CRIMINAL cases or CIVIL cases AGAINST him. If he loses, he either loses his freedom, dollars, or both. Those are not the types of cases taken up by lawyers on contingencies. So that leaves flat-fee charges, hourly fees or fixed fees for narrowly specified scopes of work. More importantly, as fees start exceeding the million dollar mark, it's hard to imagine the small no-one's-heard-of firms sourcing Trump's dream team having the financial wherewithall to extend tens of millions of dollars worth of labor without getting paid.

If Trump has one hundred million dollars in legal bills, that can only mean one thing. Two things, actually.

First, it means he isn't PAYING his legal bills and they are adding up rather than getting paid at the end of each month or quarter. Think about it. Again, if you say you have a $780 dollar electric bill, you haven't missed a single payment. You haven't been paying your electric bill for ten months. A much different scenario.

And if Trump hasn't been paying predictable legal bills that amount to millions of dollars per month, that could mean something else. It could mean Trump doesn't have the money. At least, he doesn't have it in cash. Or near-cash. Or in assets he can liquidate without further divulging how overvalued they are on his internal books, triggering calls from other lenders. The latest best estimate of Trump's net worth is $2.6 billion dollars. A mere $100 million dollars is about four percent of that nut. Of course, it's a much smaller fraction of what Trump claims he's worth, at least when begging for more loans. I don't know of any savvy investor that maintains a 100% invested position with zero cash. You always want some cash on hand in case your genius business sense spots a grossly undervalued opportunity that is too good to pass up.

But look who we're talking about...


WTH