By Alex Wagner -
MSNBC
The two former
The Apprentice
contestants should have known this wasn't going to end well.
Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss had heard Donald Trump's "You're fired" during the second season of
The Apprentice
, and they could have left it at that.
But they decided to try to do business with him again.
Years later, after Trump, the reality TV host, had become a former president twice investigated for trying to subvert democracy, Litinsky and Moss decided to do business with their former boss.
They formed a company with Trump called United Atlantic Ventures and helped him create Truth Social, his alternative to Facebook and Twitter.
Perhaps more than anything, it was a business born of necessity: after all, both Twitter and Facebook had banned Trump from their platforms.
Last week we learned that Litinsky and Moss are suing Donald Trump.
They claim that the former president is trying to defraud them out of their share of his company, just when he is about to go public and could net Trump billions of dollars if he manages to sell his shares.
And Litinsky and Moss' lawsuit threatens the profits Trump needs because he owes more than $500 million in civil fraud and defamation lawsuits.
[Is there a wave of migrant crimes as Trump says? The data does not support his accusation]
Trump is appealing those rulings, but as the case moves through the appeals process, he is supposed to pay the amounts awarded to the plaintiffs.
That doesn't mean I'm going to do it.
This week, Trump tried to get a federal court in New York to stay the execution of the $83 million he owes after losing a defamation case brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll.
On Thursday, Carroll's lawyers argued that Trump should be forced to pay because he had offered no explanation why he cannot pay and no guarantee that he ever will.
"He simply asks the Court to 'trust me' and offers... the judicial filing equivalent of a paper napkin; signed by the least trustworthy of borrowers," they wrote.
Trump is also trying to avoid the $454 million he has been ordered to pay by a New York state judge in the civil fraud case against him, two of his children and the Trump Organization.
This week, his lawyers asked the court to allow him to pay only $100 million of that judgment, arguing that he does not have the full amount and would be forced to sell real estate at fire sale prices to pay it off.
The court flatly denied that request in a brief statement, saying: "You have not explained, much less justified, any basis" for delaying payment.
[Judge denies Trump's request to pay $100 million bail instead of “impossible” $464 million fine]
If Trump's traditional delaying tactics aren't working, that doesn't mean he's given up trying to avoid the payments he's due.
On Wednesday, we learned of what could be another attempt by Trump to avoid paying.
In a legal filing, which was first reported by The Daily Beast, New York Attorney General Letitia James accuses Trump of trying to quietly move his assets to Florida to prevent the state from seizing them.
James wrote: "After the court issued its February 16 order, the defendants announced for the first time that several Trump Organization entities operating in New York... are now allegedly located in Florida."
As of 2023, two of the companies that were part of James' lawsuit, DJT Holdings LLC and DJT Holdings Managing Member LLC, were located in New York.
Now they have both moved to Florida.
Did Trump move those companies to Florida after a lawsuit was filed against him and his companies?
That would be a creative way to try to get out of paying any penalties.
But he would not be unforeseen.
In fact, it's something that the judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, was apparently worried might happen and explicitly set out to prevent.
Early in the trial, Engoron prohibited Trump from moving assets out of state.
[The Supreme Court will hear Trump's petition that he has presidential immunity in case of electoral interference]
We already know that Trump is doing everything he can to avoid accountability in his civil and criminal trials.
In some cases, it's working: The two criminal cases against the former president brought by special counsel Jack Smith, as well as the criminal case in Fulton County, Georgia, risk being stalled until after this November's election.
The civil cases against Trump - those of the New York attorney general and Carroll - have been the only ones in which Trump has actually had to face justice.
And now he is making several desperate efforts to avoid having to pay.
So far, though, whether it's the judges — or the previously fired reality stars Trump had business with — none of it has worked.