Donald Trump's Lawyers Fail to Change Judge Engoron's Mind

Writer

New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has rejected an attempt by former President Donald Trump's legal team to pause payment of his $355 million fine.

Trump was ordered to pay the fine by Engoron at the conclusion of his civil business fraud trial in New York last week. The former president's team requested a delay to payments on Monday. Engoron ended the request in a ruling on Thursday, writing in a short email to Trump lawyer Cliff Robert that he had made no argument that would "justify" a pause.

The Context

Engoron ordered Trump and his companies to pay a total of $354,868,768 last Friday, having found the former president liable for fraudulently manipulating the value of his business assets on financial statements.

He was also banned from doing business in New York for a period of three years. Additional penalties were handed out to Trump's two adult sons and some former Trump Organization executives.

Trump has vowed to appeal the ruling. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, claiming that all of his legal troubles, which include 91 felony criminal counts, amount to a politically motivated "witch hunt" as he seeks a return to the White House as the Republican frontrunner in this year's presidential election.

With daily and pre-judgment interest being added to Trump's principal fine, the former president currently owes a total of over $453.5 million. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who filed the lawsuit against Trump, has vowed to seize his assets if he fails to pay the fine.

Supporters of the ex-president, who reportedly has a net worth of around $2.6 billion, quickly started a GoFundMe page to help pay the "unjust judgment." The page had raised just under $1 million as of Thursday.

What We Know

An exhibit posted to New York State's Trump case docket shows that Engoron sent the following email to the former president's lawyer Robert at 11:37 a.m. on Thursday morning:

"Dear Mr. Robert,

You have failed to explain, much less justify, any basis for a stay. I am confident that the Appellate Division will protect your appellate rights.

Justice Engoron"

The email was in response to a message sent minutes earlier by Robert, who argued that a stay was necessary to protect Trump's "appellate rights and ensure an orderly post judgment process." Robert warned that refusing to grant the request could result in "prejudice to the defendants."

Newsweek reached out for comment to Robert via email on Thursday.

James' office argued in a letter to Engoron on the same day that Trump's team had failed to "provide any basis for staying enforcement of the judgment," while also urging the court to reject attempts by any of the defendants to change their business addresses from New York to Florida.

Views

Some have suggested that Trump may not have enough cash to pay the $400 cash million bond required to launch an appeal, with most of the former president's wealth instead being tied up real estate and other non-liquid assets. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index claims that Trump has liquid assets of around $600 million.

In a post to X, formerly Twitter, attorney Ben Meiselas, the co-founder of liberal news website MeidasTouch, claimed that the request from Trump's lawyers to delay payment meant that the former president does not have the "cash to post a bond."

Trump's estranged niece Mary Trump wrote in her "The Good in Us" newsletter on Wednesday that any suggestion the former president does not have enough money to pay would be "enough alone to enrage him."

"Donald is obsessed with his net worth and he goes to great lengths to convince people he is enormously wealthy," she wrote. "The urgency with which he clings to the the false idea that he is richer, more successful, and more talented than he is serves to hide the truth—not just from us, but from himself—that he is, quite simply, a loser."

Trump's legal team has insisted that the ex-president does have the funds to pay the bond, with lawyer Alina Habba recently saying during a recent Fox News interview that they were "prepared" to pay "the full amount and some."

What's Next

With Engoron's rejection of the request to stay the judgement, Trump will now have to either pay the fine or post his cash bond to launch an appeal. All signs point to an appeal being the more likely option. If he does not have the liquid assets required, he could be forced to sell off some of his real estate.

Trump lawyer Christopher Kise recently told Newsweek that the former president "remains confident the Appellate Division will ultimately correct the innumerable and catastrophic errors made by a trial court untethered to the law or to reality."