‘I’ll fight this all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary,’ he said.
Former President Donald Trump is set to double his net worth as his Truth Social platform goes public, but he says he doesn’t intend to give any of that money to a New York court, planning an appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the deadline for putting up a $454 million bond looms before the New York attorney general can start filing to seize Trump Organization assets to execute judgment on the civil fraud case after the March 25 deadline.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to give money to a rogue and incompetent judge—the puppet of a corrupt attorney general who’s failing with violent crime and migrant crime and whose only purpose in life is attempting to get Trump,” President Trump told Fox News on Friday afternoon.
Earlier that day posted on Truth Social that he had nearly $500 million in cash, following comments that the biggest surety companies in the world had “never heard of” a bond as big as $454 million for a private individual and that they couldn’t issue one even if they wanted to. It remains unclear whether President Trump will secure a bond of that nature or satisfy judgment some other way by the Monday deadline.
In February, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron entered judgment that ordered President Trump to, among other penalties, pay $454 million in disgorgement.
President Trump said the court battle in the fraud case was far from over.
“I’ll fight this all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary,” he said. “They can’t take away your property before you’ve had a chance to appeal the decision of a Trump-hating, incompetent judge who has been overturned more than any judge in the state.”
President Trump pointed out that Justice Engoron had already been overturned in this very case by the appellate division on multiple points. The appeals court had set a statute of limitations, which the defense argues the judge ignored during the trial and in the disgorgement calculations.
The defense had argued that the statute of limitations effectively cuts out the majority of the claims Attorney General Letitia James brought in the case, but the judge allowed the evidence in as long as it could be “connected” to transactions within the statute of limitations, he said in court.
President Trump claimed the judge “openly and hostilely disrespects the decision of the appellate division, which ruled in my favor.”
He said he hoped the appellate division would “set the record straight.”
President Trump also criticized the attorney general for bringing what he described as a politically motivated case instead of prosecuting violent crime.
“The business community in New York is being devastated by this decision, and businesses are fleeing New York—never to return—because they don’t want this to happen to them. In the meantime, violent crime is flourishing,” he said.
Rare Ruling
The unusual judgment has indeed sent shockwaves throughout the business community. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul tried to quell fears that similar lawsuits would continue, raising eyebrows when she said businessmen who weren’t Trump had nothing to worry about.
“This is really an extraordinarily unusual circumstance that the law-abiding, rule-following New Yorkers who are businesspeople have nothing to worry about because they’re very different from Donald Trump,” Ms. Hochul told WABC radio.
The case had centered around the annual statements of financial condition issued by the Trump Organization. The attorney general argued, and the judge found, that the statements contained repeated and persistent material misstatements that defrauded banks and insurers and, therefore, the public.
The statements were not official financial documents but rather marketing pieces that summarized President Trump’s net worth with values listed for major properties.
While the Trump Organization’s valuations contained clear exaggerations like $200 million for President Trump’s triplex penthouse, the judge’s rulings contained shocking under-valuations like $18 million for Mar-a-Lago.
Truth Social Deal
President Trump is expected to gain $3 billion, doubling his net worth, as a result of a windfall from his social media outlet, Truth Social, going public.
Investors voted to approve a merger between Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) and Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the owner of Truth Social. The newly combined company could begin trading on the Nasdaq Composite Index as early as next week under the DJT ticker, the same symbol used for Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts before it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004.
Based on the $44 price before the vote announcement, the newly formed company will debut with a roughly $5 billion market value. The deal frees up $293 million that DWAC raised in its initial public offering (IPO) and will be injected into Trump Media.
The deal increases President Trump’s net worth by billions on paper, but per SEC rules, he would not be able to cash out until six months after the deal closes.
Andrew Moran contributed to this report.
