Everything You Need to Know About Donald Trump’s Impending Financial Ruin As a Hard $454 Million Bond Deadline Arrives Monday
Only an eleventh-hour miracle will save Trump. But there might yet be one (or more) in the offing. Proof—which has already published four massive reports on Trump’s bond crisis—reveals his Hail Marys.
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Note that a free trial therefore grants immediate access to the four long, internationally viral Proof reports on the controversial March 11 $91.63 million Trump-Greenberg bond (1, 2, 3, 4).
Introduction
Confirmed rapist Donald Trump—now facing 88 state and federal felonies in four U.S. jurisdictions, including a trial on 34 New York felonies due to start next month—knew his financial moment of reckoning was coming weeks and weeks and weeks ago.
But despite knowing that he was about to need a $464 million supersedeas appellate bond (a bond that includes $10 million to cover his adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as well as interest accrued during the pendency of this New York civil suit), he chose to do… nothing.
Or, rather, he did many things: he played endless rounds of golf; repeatedly confused his sole remaining Republican presidential nomination opponent, Nikki Haley, with former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; engaged in perhaps the most deranged three months of social media posting American politics has ever seen; and at every opportunity railed publicly against the normal operation of America’s civil and criminal justice systems as though he were just becoming aware of them for the first time—despite demagoguing both to his own personal advantage for six decades.
What he did not do was seek an independent assessment of his New York properties—of which there are actually quite few; Trump mostly owns individual services or rooms in properties owned by others—as it might have revealed additional frauds committed by him in the past in trying to reduce tax bills or increase his attractiveness to lenders.
What he did not do was offer to put his properties in the trust of the New York court system, as that would probably have required the aforementioned independent audits revealing how much he actually owns in illiquid assets in New York. Which—once again—isn’t nearly as much as Trump would have had his followers believe for years.
What he did not do was try to sell any properties—which would have been a good way (had he started this process early enough) to avoid “fire sale” prices. But again, such a move would have revealed that all his property valuations are false (precisely what the court found in the case Trump now requires a staggeringly large appellate bond for) as well as the fact that his New York holdings are actually not particularly impressive.
In short, Trump did nothing after his September 2023 finding of liability for Fraud in New York to prepare himself, his assets, and/or his fans for the Monday deadline he now faces—which he’s sworn to the court it would be impossible for anyone to meet.
To be sure, the lies Trump has told on this score are too many to count. Most notably, of those lenders that simply refused to do business with him he has now said that they lacked the financial ability—not the willingness—to aid him; he has falsely stated that no bond of this size has ever been required of a corporate entity in American history; and he pretends that he’s being asked to liquidate assets in a matter of days that in truth he and his sprawling team of lawyers, business subordinates, accountants, and real estate managers had half a year (at a minimum) to transform into new liquidity.
Now, at the eleventh hour, the man who even his allies in the Kremlin—including top Kremlin propagandist Konstantin Rykov—like to call an “old brigand” is suddenly saying that a supposedly impossible bond payment may be possible after all. So what has Trump been doing in the shadows since September 2023 to bring us to this point, and how will this declaration change what’s now set to happen this coming Monday?
The simple fact is that either Trump makes his bond or the State of New York begins seizing his New York properties, likely starting with 40 Wall Street and some smaller properties in Westchester County. It would be a slow collapse of a business “empire” that would take months to reach completion; would happen in full view of the public; would drain monies and attention (including Trump’s attention) from his presidential campaign; would change forever how millions of Americans who thought of Trump as a successful businessman see him; and could even have a significant influence on the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. This collapse of one of the most wildly over-hyped brands in international business history could lead to personal bankruptcy proceedings, the end of Trump’s political career, or even, depending on how deranged he becomes at the prospect of losing not only his money but whatever dignity he had left, renewed attempts to incite localized violence against state and/or federal officials.
So what’ll it be? What destabilizing drama does Trump’s latest moral and ethical and legal and logistical and political and financial failure now import for the rest of us?