Former President Donald Trump is facing hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud damages after his loss in the New York property valuation case — $464 million including both damages and interest — and it's unclear how he will be able to come up with that kind of money if he can't appeal.
There might be a deus ex machina solution for him, though, his niece Mary Trump wrote on her Substack Monday: Truth Social, the alternative social media platform he built after getting banned from Twitter four years ago.
"He almost certainly doesn’t have enough cash on hand to cover the judgment plus interest. And if he is unable to find a legitimate entity to loan him the money or post a bond, what then? Who else is there to loan it to him? And what might that mean in terms of his allegiances — especially if he gets back into the White House?" she wrote. It's possible that Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia could front him the money, with terrible implications for national security — but there is another option.
"Donald’s social media company is close to a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. (a publicly traded shell company) which could be worth as much as $4 billion dollars to him, as he would receive the vast majority of shares, as many as 79 million of them," wrote Mary Trump.
"It’s enough to make one’s head explode that this criminal keeps getting bailed out and failing up," she wrote. "Still, it’s better than Putin or Saudi Arabia owning an even bigger piece of him than they already do."
Despite Mary Trump's theory, other legal experts disagree.
Some have suggested that the merger won't easily give Trump cash, as his $4 billion will be in the form of stock he would have to sell, and that there would be conflict of interest laws standing in the way of Trump using his shares to pay off legal debts.
