Former President Donald Trump asked the judge overseeing the civil fraud case to delay enforcing the $355 million judgment against him for one month.
In a letter to Judge Arthur Engoron, Trump’s attorneys accuse New York Attorney General Letitia James of an “unseemly rush” to enforce the judgment by submitting a proposal for the judge to sign just days after the ruling.
Trump has 30 days from when a judgment is entered to post bond and appeal.
Last week, the judge ordered Trump to pay $355 million plus interest and imposed a three-year ban from acting as an officer of a New York business.
Can someone here sum up what happened as I can’t seem to find a simple answer online. I know he’s been done for fraud and fiddling his loans, but why does it add up to 355 million? I didn’t even think he was worth that much.
There are several deals he made that are, in the findings of the case, considered to have been facilitated by fraud. Since any income from these deals is therefore considered to be “ill-gotten gains”, the full income from them is the amount in question here. So it’s like, he defrauded people in order to sell $355m of property so he loses the income generated by that fraud
Depending on what you measure worth with, I’d argue he’s not even worth talking about.
That said, he is said to be worth 2,6 bil in money
The thing is, when wealth like this is calculated, it includes assets. And the value of those assets can be self-reported (which was the whole issue of this case to begin with).
So is he worth 2.6 billion? Well, Trump claims that Mar-a-Lago is worth between $420 million and $1.5 billion. The judge in this case deemed it to be worth between $18 million and $37 million.
Trump is rich. Even if he has no cash of his own, he can always get some to continue to live his extravagant lifestyle because there will always be fools willing to give him money because they love him or shrewd people who give him money to control him… but his actual worth could be well below that.
His debt well exceeds his worth already. His four (five?) previous bankruptcies fell on other people so he got away with them.
These values are kind of bullshit though, same with Musk and Bezos. They’re approximations of value, not necessarily what could be realised or the true value of their tangible assets. They’re not really the wealthiest people in the world, they’re simply the wealthiest people in the public eye.
True, and this is also, as far as I understand, what he has been accused of inflating in order to manipulate banks and business partners. This is also why I mentioned that his worth depends a lot on what you measure it with.
If you have the time, you can read the judge’s ruling and explanation here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/f203be39-020c-4f82-a423-96aa20c08e3a.pdf
It’s a very approachable read, no law degree necessary.