Don’t go counting chickens
Yes, yes, nobody wants to front Donald “91 Counts” Trump half a billion to cover his bond in the New York fraud trial judgment while he appeals (as he always does). Trump attorneys “have asked appellate judges to reduce, delay or waive the bond requirement.” But what will New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) do to collect when he can’t cough up the cash by tommorrow (Monday)? Well?
“Nothing happens immediately,” The Washington Post advises:
The appeals court generally issues rulings on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so there is very little chance it will act by Monday on Trump’s request to waive the bond requirement. If it doesn’t, and if Trump doesn’t post a bond by then, legal experts say there is nothing preventing James from calling on the New York City sheriffs or on city marshals to begin seizing his assets.
But there are reasons for her to wait. Legal experts say Trump has a chance of getting some type of relief from the appeals court. If James begins moving on his assets before the court rules, she may have to backtrack afterward. She also may consider the optics of moving quickly. As Nikos Passas, a Northeastern University criminology professor, put it: “She doesn’t want to be accused of being overly aggressive and unfair.”
Whatever she does, Trump will nasally whine about the unfairness “like nobody’s ever seen” of it all.
James has said she intends to take Trump’s assets if he fails to pay. “If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” she told ABC News last month. In the interview, James mentioned Trump’s 40 Wall Street office building by name.
Experts say James would probably start with New York properties, partly because the LLCs that own two of them — 40 Wall Street and his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County — are defendants in the fraud case. James’s office already filed Engoron’s judgment with a court in Westchester County, a first step toward seizing the Seven Springs property, as CNN first reported.
The Post offers more details, of course, including how his Friday Truth Social boast that he has “almost five hundred million dollars in cash” undercuts his complaints that the court owes him some relief as he scrounges to arrange payment by Monday.
Each time the former reality show star presented himself to the court for arrest and processing, security concerns and undeserved deference meant the public was denied a proper perp walk. That would be one reality show many of us would like to watch. Cameras following as James formally seize Trump’s assets would be less cinematic and not pay-per-view worthy.
Trump may receive a trial date for his criminal hush-money case on Monday as well. The trial could begin “as soon as next month,” The New York Times reports:
The twin threats — on the same day, in the same town — crystallize two of Mr. Trump’s greatest and longest-held fears: a criminal conviction and a public perception that he does not have as much cash as he claims.
For decades, Mr. Trump employed a broad array of tactics to keep those fears at bay, learning from his well-connected father and his own ruthless lawyer and fixer, Roy M. Cohn. After fending off local and federal investigations, not to mention financial ruin, Mr. Trump came to believe that any problems could be solved by personal connections — and a whole lot of money.
“If Trump uses one thing to score the game, it has always been money,” said Jack O’Donnell, a former casino executive who worked for Mr. Trump in the early 1990s and wrote a tell-all book about him. “If he has more money than someone, he is winning and the other person is losing. And if someone has more money than Trump, he has the fear that someone will say he is losing to that person.”
Mr. Trump himself has also described the shame of becoming a criminal defendant four times over. Even as his advisers used the indictments to great effect in fund-raising and galvanizing his Republican base, the former president has conceded that the charges pained him.
Tell it to the minority groups he’s smeared, and to the subcontractors he’s cheated, and to the adversaries whose lives were upended by threats from his MAGA followers.
Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess fill out column inches summarizing Trump’s already familiar history of using wealth and personal connections to avoid accountability. Through a “public relations strategy” and “a mix of bare-knuckle tactics — attacking prosecutors as ‘corrupt’ and guilty of the same conduct of which he was suspected — and arm-twisting charm,” plus endless legal delaying tactics, Trump has to this point in life remained out of jail.
Don’t go counting chickens. What’s worked for him in the past may yet work for Trump now. “Equal justice” is a pipe dream. Trump’s life is proof that anyone accused in this country gets just as much due process as they can afford.
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