As of: March 25, 2024, 7:18 p.m
By: Christian Stör
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Donald Trump is having trouble posting a high bail amount of more than $450 million.
© Wilfredo Lee/dpa
Donald Trump's coffers are probably empty.
He fails to post $450 million in bail.
Now he's running out of time.
New York – Donald Trump is considered a billionaire.
After all, the US magazine
Forbes
currently estimates his fortune at around 2.6 billion US dollars.
And yet the 77-year-old's coffers currently seem to be empty.
In any case, he is unable to pay a bail amount of around $450 million.
This is the sum that Trump must deposit after his conviction in a New York fraud trial.
According to the court, Trump and his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had manipulated the value of the family empire for years in order to obtain cheaper loans and insurance contracts.
The former US president has filed an appeal, but has to pay the money as bail.
Donald Trump is threatening to have his property in New York seized
Easier said than done.
Timely payment is a “practical impossibility,” argues the Trump team.
At first glance, this looks strange given the presumed wealth.
And yet there might be some truth in it.
It can be assumed that large parts of the money are tied up in real estate.
It is unclear how much money he has available to him in cash or shares.
Almost a year ago things looked different.
At the time, Trump claimed under oath that he still had enough cash: “We have a lot of cash.
It will probably be well over $400 million in cash.”
Of course, that could also be because he was sentenced in January to pay more than $80 million in damages to author E. Jean Carroll for defamation.
The Republican appealed here too, but had to submit a kind of bail amount of more than $90 million to the court.
Donald Trump is running out of time
Now Trump is running out of time.
He has to deposit the amount by March 25th.
If he doesn't do that, the justice system can start seizing Trump's properties or accounts.
It is unclear whether this will happen.
Trump has asked an appeals court to either suspend payment of the money or accept a guarantee of only $100 million for the time being.
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Nevertheless, Trump is already confronted with the threat of seizure of his New York family estate.
According to US media reports, New York prosecutor Letitia James has taken the first steps to seize the Republican's assets in Westchester County.
There, Trump owns a golf course and the sprawling Seven Springs estate, which is surrounded by dense forest and rolling hills.
Trump originally planned to turn the property into a luxury golf resort, but that failed due to opposition from local people.
Is Donald Trump threatened with bankruptcy?
What else can Trump do now?
In any case, he doesn't have many options.
Here are at least three, none of which he likes:
Selling his real estate
Borrow the money
File for bankruptcy
Of course, Trump could sell some of his properties to raise cash.
But will he do that?
“I would be forced to take out mortgages or sell large assets, perhaps at fire-sale prices, and if I win the appeal they would be gone.
Does that make sense?” he wrote about his frustration on the online platform Truth Social.
Maybe Trump will find someone to lend him at least some of the money and scrape together the rest himself.
But he would have to find a very generous donor.
The easiest thing for him to do would be to file for bankruptcy.
But that doesn't seem to make much sense, especially politically.
After all, Trump wants to defeat incumbent Joe Biden in the US election in November.
It would be embarrassing: the businessman who wants to lead the fortunes of the world's largest economy as president is suddenly bankrupt.
Donald Trump is sounding the alarm
In the meantime, Trump is sounding the alarm.
“Keep your dirty hands off Trump Tower,” said a message from his team.
The high-rise in the Manhattan district is considered a symbol of Trump's wealth.
However, it is unlikely that the skyscraper will be confiscated soon.
“You can’t just say: That’s Trump Tower, I’ll take it,” New York foreclosure lawyer Steven Yudin told US broadcaster
ABC
.
He doesn't assume that Trump owns the entire building himself - that needs to be unraveled first.
Nikos Passas sees it similarly.
The professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University told
CNN
that it wasn't easy to get hold of the assets.
Everything is “complexly organized”.
Trump is not the owner on paper and therefore “a judgment against him would not be directly enforceable.”
It won't be easy to sort this out.
(cs/dpa)