Trump Faces $454 Million Bond Deadline and Hush Money Hearing

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 Former President Donald Trump will return to a New York City courtroom on Monday for a hearing on further delaying a criminal case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for falsifying business records—the same day he faces a deadline to post over $454 million for bond, or face possible immediate consequences.


 Trump’s criminal trial, which is related to alleged hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016, was originally scheduled to begin on Monday—but Judge Juan Merchan agreed to delay the start date by 30 days in February.

Trump’s attorneys have filed to dismiss the case, and Merchan will likely issue a ruling on this tomorrow or set a new trial date.

Meanwhile, Trump also faces a deadline to post 120% of the of the $454 million judgment against him while he appeals the case to the New York Appellate Court division, but his lawyers have indicated in filings last week he does not have enough cash on hand to make the payment and cannot get a loan after asking 30 different lenders.

On Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James can begin freezing Trump’s bank accounts or seizing his properties in order to cover the bond payment—and filings with the Westchester County Clerk’s office on Thursday indicate she may begin by seizing his Seven Springs golf course in Bedford, New York.

Although Trump claimed Friday to have over $500 million in cash on hand, the former president’s attorneys indicated he is having trouble raising the funds to pay his bond. He has also faced problems paying his legal fees, and has needed to dip into funds raised by his Save America PAC. According to filings with the Federal Elections Commission, Trump has paid his lawyers $50 million with money raised by his re-election PAC since March 2023. This includes $5 million he paid in legal fees only in February. Additionally, Trump was ordered to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defamatory comments about her. Trump, who has also appealed this judgment, posted the $91.6 million bond earlier this month.


Judge Merchan could potentially delay the hush money trial further, however, prosecutors in Bragg’s office argued last week no more delays were necessary, noting Trump’s lawyers were using a “grab-bag of meritless discovery arguments.” Trump’s lawyers filed 33,000 documents during the discovery process, but according to prosecutors only about 270 were relevant to the case. Trump is also hoping that a panel of judges on the New York Appeals Court will rule in his favor and reduce or delay, although it is unlikely they will do so before Tuesday, the Washington Post reported. An appeals court judge previously rejected the former president’s request to post only $100 million of the fraud judgment in February.

We estimate Trump’s net worth at $2.6 billion, but most of his money is located in real estate assets, including his residential apartment buildings like Trump Tower, his golf clubs and his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. On Friday, Trump closed on a deal to merge Trump Media and Technology Group, the company that owns his Truth Social platform, with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, in a deal that would take the network public. The deal would give the president about 79 million shares of the new company that closed at $36.94 on Friday—making the former president’s stock holdings worth about $2.9 billion. However, experts in initial public offerings told Forbes that Trump will be unable to use this new wealth to post bond, as the merger agreement explicitly forbids shareholders from using their stock as collateral for bond or to secure a loan.


Trump has continued to lash out at Bragg, James and Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the civil fraud trial and determined the $454 million fine. On Sunday, Trump claimed in a post on Truth Social that Engoron “fraudulently undervalued Mar-a-Lago at $18,000,000 in order to create his fake narrative,” calling the judge “grossly incompetent and corrupt” and insisting he should pay no fine.

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