Why Trump Won't Get Bailed Out of His Judgments

There's a lot of speculation that a private party will step in to ward off Trump's financial ruin, but it's very unlikely to happen

When the hammer of justice came down on Trump in his business fraud case in New York earlier this month, and the judge ordered that he pay back over $300 million in ill-gotten profits, and with interest, bringing the total judgment to over $400 million, the question at first was “How is he going to pay for this?”"

Now we’ve been treated to his reactions and further filings, so we know that he doesn’t have the cash to pay this judgment, or even the cash and collateral to pay a bond on the judgment to cover him while he appeals. This isn’t surprising…it’s almost half a billion dollars! That’s a very significant amount of money.

Most rich people don’t actually have half a billion just sitting around in checking or savings accounts. They might have decent amounts in several different types of accounts, with varying degrees of liquidity, and might be able to pull together that much or more given several days or a few weeks. Many would have assets that make up the overwhelming majority of their net worth in the form of stocks, stock options, commodities, securities, real estate, or business interests that are worth hundreds of millions or even billions each. However, to take advantage of these assets, they would have to be sold to recoup the money, or they could use them as collateral to borrow money.

With Trump’s latest filing stating that the most cash he could conjure up would be $100 million, he is indicating that he doesn’t have the cash in liquid accounts and doesn’t have the ability to sell enough assets or borrower against them to raise the cash. Or the assets he does have are already being used as collateral for loans currently in repayment, so their usefulness is already exhausted.