New York Attorney General Letitia James may reportedly wait for a New York court to rule on former President Donald Trump’s appeal to hold off posting a $454 million bond or have it reduced.
Trump must post a liquid (cash, securities) bond by Monday’s deadline to block James from enforcing a civil fraud judgment.
A New York Appeals Court could rule anytime this week on Trump’s appeal. The court generally issues rulings on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Washington Post reported.
“James might start slowly,” the New York Times reported Monday on her potential action against Trump. “She could even wait for an appeals court to decide whether to pause the judgment, a decision that could come as soon as this week.”
James could use three methods to collect the sum, as Breitbart News reported:
- Placing liens against properties
- Collecting rents from properties
- Collecting funds from Trump’s New York state bank accounts
“But if she wanted to take a more aggressive stance,” the Times continued, “Ms. James could freeze some of Mr. Trump’s bank accounts, which might send the Trump family business into a tailspin.”
“She could also seek to seize some of his New York properties, and public records show that Ms. James has formally posted the judgment in Westchester County, a preliminary step toward staking a claim to Mr. Trump’s private estate and golf club there,” the Times added.
Taking action against Trump in New York state is the likeliest first point of attack for James, Mitchell Epner, a long-time New York litigator, told USA Today.
James would likely first go after cash in Trump’s New York bank accounts, then property that isn’t real estate, and third real estate, Epner said. “If there are bank accounts in New York, those can be frozen essentially immediately if she already knows where they are, and the turnover of the funds in a bank account would be measured in days or weeks,” Epner said.
The judgment would become a lien against Trump’s Manhattan properties due to their location in New York County, where James won in court. “For instance, if the Trump Organization — which is one of the Trump entities subject to the judgment — owns a property in Manhattan with tenants who pay rent, you can have their rental payments redirected,” USA Today reported.
James could then use the judgment to target Trump’s assets in other states through a process called “domesticating,” Epner said:
The courts of the other 49 states and the District of Columbia don’t really have discretion about whether or not to allow the New York judgment to be domesticated in that state, because the Constitution has something called the Full Faith and Credit Clause, which requires each state to give full faith and credit to the judgment of the other states.
If James is successful in seizing the properties, James could sell the real estate at auction below market value. “The problem is that the properties might be sold, so he might be able to recover a money judgment for the value of the property, but that’s not what he wants, he doesn’t really want to have the property dismantled,” Director of the Center for Real Estate Law & Policy at the Cardozo School of Law Stewart Sterk told USA Today.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
