In a legal fracas rapidly spiraling out of control, New York’s tenacious Attorney General is doubling down with blazing fury – demanding an appeals court force Donald Trump to cough up a staggering $454 million bond before even considering pausing the colossal civil fraud judgment against him.
The explosive filing lands like a seismic bombshell in the increasingly acrimonious battle, with state prosecutors unleashing a withering broadside to eviscerate Trump’s claims of financial destitution. They accuse the former president’s team of peddling blatant falsehoods and half-truths about his ability to secure a bond of such stratospheric proportions.
Trump’s Desperate “Impossibility” Plea Meets White-Hot Resistance
Just days ago, Trump’s lawyers desperately pleaded with the court that securing the full bond amount was a “practical impossibility” for the embattled 76-year-old. They leaned heavily on testimony from an insurance broker who lobbed the grenade that virtually no bonding company would underwrite a sum that mammouth.
In their Hail Mary bid, Trump’s legal eagles begged the judges to show mercy – agreeing to a measly $100 million bond that would still allow him to appeal the jaw-dropping $454 million judgment handed down last year. A scathing ruling found Trump conspired to grossly inflate his net worth for over a decade through ubiquitous financial trickery.
But in a brutal counterpunch, New York’s AG is having absolutely none of it. The state’s prosecutors launched a fusillade of precision-strike arguments to vaporize Trump’s claims to total financial ruin.
“Defendants’ new factual allegations and legal arguments fail to support their extraordinary request for a stay based on a bond or deposit of less than one-fourth of the money-judgment amount,” senior state litigator Dennis Fan’s salvo reads.
AG Shreds Trump Team’s Credibility at Every Turn
Not stopping there, Fan’s filing relentlessly assails the credibility of Trump’s star witness – insurance broker Gary Giulietti – by quoting the very judge who ruled against Trump calling Giulietti utterly untrustworthy. The reason? His long-running “personal and professional relationship with Donald Trump” itself.
Perhaps most damagingly, prosecutors suggest the true reason Trump can’t get bonded has nothing to do with his ability to pay. Rather, they hypothesize bonding companies simply don’t believe the wildly inflated valuations Trump assigns to his real estate empire’s crown jewel properties like Trump Tower.
“Sureties may have refused…because using Mr. Trump’s real estate will generally need ‘a property appraisal’ and his holdings are not nearly as valuable as defendants claim,” Fan’s filing brutally insinuates.
In other words, the AG posits that the very deceitful financial practices underlying the civil fraud case are now preventing Trump from coming up with the bond money to pause the judgment against him. An ouroboros of epic legal implications if true.
The Clock is Ticking for Trump’s Gilded Empire
Make no mistake – this pitched battle over the bond amount is of civilization-shaking importance for the former U.S. president. If Trump cannot post an acceptable bond figure by the March 27 deadline in just four days, New York authorities will have the legal right to start seizing his prized assets to satisfy the $454 million owed.
That potentially includes not just forcing the humiliating sale of the opulent Trump Tower on Manhattan’s iconic 5th Avenue. But also other crown jewel holdings like the glitzy 40 Wall Street office tower, his lavish Mar-a-Lago resort, golf courses, vineyards – effectively torching Trump’s gilded real estate empire down to the foundations over which he’s so obsessively constructed his brand and cult of wealth.
For a man pathologically fixated on his net worth as the ultimate scorecard of life, having his life’s work seized and liquidated in a court-ordered fire sale would be a cataclysmic disgrace beyond imagining. Potentially capsizing Trump’s plot for a return to political viability and the White House.
The Clock is Furiously Ticking
Which raises the stakes exponentially in this escalating, bare-knuckle brawl between New York’s prosecutorial fighters and Trump’s increasingly cornered legal team. The former president now faces a binary choicepoint:
Either marshal all his remaining resources and connections to somehow scrape together the gargantuan $454 million bond payment before March 27th’s inflection point.
Or start preparing for a scorched-earth liquidation of his most prized real estate and business assets at bargain basement prices should the AG’s office unleash its enforcement powers to the fullest extent.
With the clock furiously ticking down and legal Armageddon potentially looming, all eyes are glued to the courtroom skirmishes to see how Trump navigates this latest multi-million dollar crisis enveloping his tumultuous post-presidency.
In the highest-stakes civil litigation he’s ever confronted, the former Reality TV star is about to discover whether he gets the ultimate walk of shameful disgrace off the legal reality show stage – or somehow summons a dramatic, legacy-salvaging twist of fate.
