Last Month’s $83.3 Million Civil Jury Verdict Against Donald Trump in Federal Court Raises Historically Serious National Security Concerns
The disgraced former president often cites his ongoing political ambitions as a reason for special treatment from the courts—but what they really require is special treatment from the intel community.
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Introduction
Twice-impeached former president Donald Trump—who faces 91 felonies in three state and federal jurisdictions, hundreds of millions of dollars in civil judgments in two cases in New York, and future fallout with voters (particularly suburban women voters) from a recent federal court declaring him a rapist—is the prohibitive favorite to be the 2024 presidential nominee of the one-time self-professed “law and order” political party in the United States: the Republican Party.
He’s also a man who testified under oath, in a 2023 civil deposition in one of his two cases in New York, that he has $400 million in liquid assets free and clear to pay any civil judgment that may be issued against him in that state or anywhere else.
Unsurprisingly, no one believes him.
Not only is Donald Trump known to regularly lie under oath—Perjury offenses he inexplicably was never charged with, as indeed they went the same way as the ten Obstruction of Justice offenses the Mueller Report found in 2019 that were buried by then-president Trump’s handpicked Attorney General, William Barr—but Pulitzer Prize-winning Trump biographer David Cay Johnston recently told CNN that, far from having $400 million available to satisfy the civil judgments leveled against him, Trump may not even have $16 million in liquid assets right now. (A more generous appraisal from Forbes, which has consistently overstated Trump’s wealth in its annual assessments, holds that while Trump may have nine figures of liquid assets, he will still come up short if New York Attorney General Letitia James gets the $370 million award she seeks in the first of Trump’s two New York cases and Trump then loses his appeal of the $83.3 million judgment in his second New York case, which judgment may balloon to $92.5 million, due to interest costs, during the pendency of an appeal.) Nor can Trump raid his campaign coffers, as the Times confirms he has nowhere near even $83.3 million left in them—let alone the nearly half a billion dollars he may need.
Most Americans seem to be of the same view as Johnston, Forbes, and the New York Times. Given the number of times in the past that Trump has hidden the reality of his financial status—including his countless lies and obfuscations about his tax returns, which finally showed him to have been the least successful American businessman of the period from 1985 to 1994—the view that Trump will desperately need a massive infusion of cash in the next few months is now ubiquitous amongst the general public.
Indeed, in two polls taken on the Proof feeds at Threads and Twitter, readers sounded off about how much money they think Trump really has free and clear right now:
While certainly not scientific, the fact that more than 7,000 social media accounts voted on the poll questions above and that in each poll almost exactly 58% of voting accounts—a clear majority—said that Trump has 1/40th or less of the amount he says he does is, in the opinion of this bestselling Trump presidential historian, consistent with popular sentiment among mainstream American news consumers in early 2024.
The perception of Donald Trump as (a) illiquid, (b) cash-strapped, (c) debt-riddled, (d) financially desperate, and (e) willing to say or do anything to (i) hide his financial state and (ii) improve that state is one he’s worked diligently (if inadvertently) to generate.
So it would be astonishing if the American intelligence community was of a different opinion than so much of the country or, more conservatively, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (Johnston) who has specifically made studying Trump’s finances his business.
Johnston’s view that Trump may not even have $16 million in liquid assets is not only consistent with what 85% of poll respondents said in the two polls above, but uniquely important to the circumstances in which Trump now finds himself. Why? Because $16 million is approximately the amount Trump would have to put up immediately to avoid paying the full amount of the federal judgment in the just-concluded second E. Jean Carroll Defamation case (hereafter referred to as “Carroll II”): $83.3 million dollars.
{Note: In Carroll I, a 2023 civil case involving allegations of Sexual Abuse and Defamation, Trump was found liable for both of these offenses—the first of which the court later clarified constituted “rape” as that term is commonly understood by laypeople—and fined $5.5 million.}
The Carroll II Judgment
Were Trump not planning to appeal the Carroll II judgment, he would have to pay it in full right now—or plead poverty to the court and establish some sort of negotiated payment plan, a decision that would reveal him to have committed Fraud and Perjury in the 2023 civil deposition in which he discussed having $400 million in liquid assets (for the record, an amount just under 500% of the amount he owes Carroll). Any such plan would also, almost certainly, require liens or forced sales of high-profile Trump-branded entities—the possession of which is part of Trump’s political persona and so considered critical by the candidate to his already shaky 2024 general election pitch.
But all this is moot: Trump has already announced he will appeal the Carroll II verdict.
What this means is that Trump now has two options: he can pay $83.3 million into a federal escrow fund to remain therein for the duration of his appeal of Carroll II—a process that could take years, during which time Trump would be responsible for the interest on the $83.3 million, amounting to about $10 million—or he could purchase a bond to cover that amount, a purchase that would cost him approximately $16 million (20% of the total jury award in Carroll II).
{Note: In Carroll I, which Trump is appealing, the judgment was $5 million. Trump has had to pay $5.5 million to an escrow fund, however, due to the aforementioned interest requirement.}
If Trump doesn’t actually have $83.3 million (or $92.5 million, with interest included) in liquid assets, which it appears hardly anyone thinks he does, he will have to opt for the second route described above. The problem, as NBC News legal analyst Katie Phang reported back in June of 2023 after Carroll I, is that it’s unclear whether Trump is able to secure an appellate bond given his current financial straits. And certainly if he was unable to do so in Carroll I—as Phang believes to have been the case as to a $5 million judgment, why would anything be better for Trump now, with an $83.3 million judgment?