He’s going to have to sell his stuff to pay a half-billion dollars’ worth of legal penalties.
Donald Trump’s companies have filed for bankruptcies six times, but now he may actually be about to go broke. On Friday, a New York judge penalized the former president $355 million after finding him liable for lying about his wealth and the value of his properties in New York — and that’s before interest charges, which could add another $50 million or so. Then there’s the $4 million owed by Eric Trump and Don Jr. each — which, come on, whose money is that really? The giant liabilities are due in part to Trump and his organization’s “complete lack of remorse,” Justice Arthur Engoron ruled, as well as for its deterrent effect: Trump and the Trump Organization’s officers were “likely to continue their fraudulent ways unless the Court grants significant injunctive relief.” Add this to the $88 million he owes writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her, twice, and Trump owes roughly $500 million. That would wipe out almost his entire estimated cash pile and vaporize about a sixth of his total net worth.
Trump can afford this, but he is probably going to have to sell something big. His net worth, according to both Forbes and Bloomberg, is between $2.6 and $3.1 billion, but most of that is tied up in his buildings and other properties. His cash pile is about $600 million, Bloomberg estimates, and he cannot use campaign or political-action-committee money to pay these fines. Some of his attorneys’ fees can be paid for with money that he’s raised from donors, but it’s not clear what money is paying for which lawyers between the four criminal cases he’s fighting off.
There are very few workarounds available to him to get cash. According to Bloomberg, Trump’s businesses have been bringing in cash from renters, and he made about $100 million in profit after selling the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2022, though it’s unclear how much of that money is left. The self-proclaimed “King of Debt” won’t be able to get a loan from a financial institution overseen or chartered by New York state regulators, Engoron ruled. While that doesn’t eliminate all the banks in the country, it does rule out a lot that could afford that kind of risk. (There are, of course, hedge funds and other shadow banks, but they’d likely charge him a lot more.) Trump is going to appeal the ruling, but that doesn’t really buy him a lot of time or give him any real relief. He will have to pay up or post a cash bond in 30 days, and delaying adds interest and other expenses to the money he already owes.
Take a closer look at his holdings and it seems Trump might have bigger problems ahead. His largest holding, by value, is a minority partnership with Vornado at 555 California Street in San Francisco — a commercial office building in a city experiencing a “doom loop.” Microsoft, a former tenant, is trying to dump its office space there, and a neighboring building recently saw its value plunge by 80 percent. If you go down the list of Trump’s other holdings in New York, much of what his name is attached to are similar properties, but through deals that are not as cut-and-dried as somebody just holding the title to a property. At 40 Wall Street, for instance, he owns a ground lease — that is, he pays the building’s owners, the wealthy German Hinneberg family, for the right to lease it out. Since commercial real estate is in the throws of a valuation crisis, if Trump has to start selling any of these assets, he’ll likely be handing someone a fire-sale deal.
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