For Sale: 1 USA, Only $1 Billion

A vote for Trump is a vote for the sale of America

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Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, owes a LOT of money—more than half a billion dollars—and he does not have it. Do not take my word for it; read his own filing in New York State Court:

Diligent efforts since that time, including “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world,” have proven that “obtaining an appeal bond in the full amount” of the Judgment “is not possible under the circumstances presented.” The amount of the judgment, with interest, exceeds $464 million, and very few bonding companies will consider a bond of anything approaching that magnitude. The remaining handful will not “accept hard assets such as real estate as collateral,” but “will only accept cash or cash equivalents (such as marketable securities).” [Citations omitted].

In short, not only does Trump lack the money to cover the judgment, he cannot even convince creditors to loan it to him, irrespective of whatever collateral he might have to offer. And that is not the only judgment imposed against him. Before discussing what implications emerge from this problem, first let’s look at why he owes this much money.

Decades of Fraud

After a trial lasting longer than 2 months, a New York civil court ruled that Trump, his children Donald and Eric, his accountant Allen Weisselberg, and others committed bank, insurance, and real estate fraud, engaged in a conspiracy to cover it up, and filed numerous false business records as part of that conspiracy. In describing the full scope of the scheme, the judge wrote “The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” (page 77). The judge ordered more than $365 million in disgorgements, meaning Trump has to pay back this amount because he acquired it through illegal acts. The interest on the total brings the amount to around $450 million, and the cost of securing a bond will raise the total to near $500 million. Additionally, the Trump organization can no longer function without a court-appointed overseer because “this Court is mindful that this action is not the first time the Trump Organization or its related entities has been found to have engaged in corporate malfeasance.” By this, the judge seems to be referring to the fact that the Trump Organization has already been found criminally liable for tax fraud about a year or so before. He may also be nodding toward numerous other courts that found that Trump, Don Jr., and Eric committed fraud.

Trump can appeal the latest decision, though few believe it will succeed. New York’s General Business Law and the other laws relevant to the case have long been within the arsenal of the Attorney General, and those statutes outline the allowable penalties. The long history of case law indicates that the ruling will stand. Whether he appeals or not, Trump nonetheless must post the bond to prevent execution of the judgment (that is, unless the Appellate Court reduces the required bond or waives it altogether—again, neither is likely to happen). If the Attorney General of New York executes the judgment and there is no bond in place, she will be able to seize any of Trump’s assets associated with the case. This could include both Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago, among many others.

Before the judgment in the fraud case, Trump was found civilly liable for rape. In that case, the court also imposed fines resulting from Trump defaming the victim. Defamation is “a statement that injures a third party's reputation.” On live TV, social media, and at rallies, Trump repeatedly called his victim a liar, claiming she made up the “whole thing,” it “never happened” and he referred to her as “crazy,” among other insults. As a result, the victim sued him twice resulting in total judgments of more than $83 million. To cover those judgments and prevent disgorgement of any assets while that case is under appeal, Trump had to secure a $91.6 million bond.

Trump also owes a much smaller amount resulting from a judgment in the UK. A London court ordered Trump to pay the legal fees for a frivolous case he filed against Orbis Business Intelligence, a firm owned by Christopher Steele, the author of the famous Steele Dossier. The judge imposed $382,000 in legal fees on Trump (in addition to his own) writing that the case was bound to fail—meaning it was backed by no legal authority.

The Implications

It appears that Trump absolutely refuses to sell and wishes not to lose any of his properties. This is evident in one line of his recent filing: “The remaining handful will not ‘accept hard assets such as real estate as collateral,’ but will only accept cash or cash equivalents (such as marketable securities).” Michael Popok, of the Meidas Touch Network, notes that it is simply unbelievable that Trump cannot leverage his properties to acquire a bond. Instead, Popok believes that Trump is purposefully choosing not to do so. If Trump uses the property as collateral for a bond, when he inevitably loses the appeal those properties go up in a ‘fire sale’ to support the bond unless Trump pays the bond company or its backing bank in cash. The logical inference from this is that Trump clearly does not have the cash, so he is instead begging the court to forgive or reduce the debt to avoid the liquidation of his properties. Mary Trump, Donald’s niece, explains why the forced sale of Trump properties will so profoundly affect her uncle:

Donald has always presented himself as a man who is, in his words, “really rich”; a multi-billionaire who as of last year had $400 million in the bank. Today those claims are revealed to be the fiction they always were. [Emphasis hers].

It is reasonable to conclude, then, that Trump will seek cash from any source willing to offer it to avoid this devastating consequence. And what can half a billion dollars buy? If Trump secures the cash via a loan or ‘gift’ and somehow wins the presidential election, then the office of the President, US foreign policy, military power, and any number of other resources under the country’s most powerful office are on the market for the winning bidder.

History has already shown that Trump and his family are willing, even eager, to profit off the presidency. Jared Kushner walked away with $2 billion from the Saudi Arabian private equity firm Affinity Partners in an extremely shady ‘investment’ deal. In fact, the firm’s own risk assessment panel determined that Kushner’s company was “unsatisfactory in all aspects.” Nevertheless, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) overruled the decision and released the money. United States intelligence had previously downgraded Kushner’s security clearance, given to him on an interim basis by Trump himself, based on his vulnerability to manipulation. About a month after the downgrade, MBS was reportedly overheard saying that he had Kushner in his “back pocket.” A back pocket now stuffed with 2 billion dollars.

In 2018, the Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to Trump and his daughter Ivanka within just two months of their application. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington illustrated the obvious corruption in that deal, writing:

Last year, Ivanka's business won preliminary approval for three trademarks on the same day that she dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. Earlier this year, Trump announced tariffs against China that exempted clothing — including clothing imports from Ivanka's Chinese manufacturers.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, and Norman Eisen, chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington stated,

When foreign governments do business with Ivanka Trump, they know that they are dealing with the favored daughter of the U.S. president who also works in her father's White House.

East & Concord Partners’ intellectual property division expert Charles Feng told the New York Times, these approvals normally take around 18 months. Literally days after receiving the trademarks, Donald Trump posted on Twitter: “President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

In April of 2018, the US Commerce Department imposed sanctions on ZTE which prevented it from the future purchase of mobile components from American companies. The ban resulted from a second violation by ZTE of international prohibitions against selling certain equipment to Iran and North Korea. The tweet above came upon the heels of a $1 billion fine—a relatively small settlement—that lifted the ban on ZTE. The fine did not ease fears in the US intelligence community of Chinese espionage involving ZTE, which contributed to the ban in the first place. Federal agencies were already prohibited from using ZTE products for official business. Ivanka’s lucrative trademarks were not the only benefit the Trump family received before the sudden reversal. Just 72 hours before the above tweet, the Chinese government agreed to “provide $500 million in loans to an Indonesian theme park [with which] the Trump Organization has a deal to license President Donald Trump's name.” Until the Chinese government issued the loans, the project had stalled, never beginning construction. But the Trumps desperately wanted it to; Don Jr. in 2015 said “Trump Hotel Development is involved in the master plan of this spectacular development, which will include the first Trump golf course in Asia as well as a world-class spa, luxurious hotel and residences.”

Over 40 times between January 20, 2017 and September 15, 2021, Trump hotels charged the Secret Service as much as $1,185 per night, more than five times the recommended government rate of $201. Throughout his administration, Trump properties earned more than $1.4 million in revenue from Secret Service agents’ accommodations. Saudi lobbyists spent more than $300,000 in Trump hotels over just three months during his presidency. Moreover, Trump never divested himself from his businesses like every other president in recent decades has, a presumed violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which is the provision meant to prevent presidential corruption.

Now facing the probable liquidation of his properties, there seems no bottom to which Trump will sink to try to save them. Half a billion dollars can buy any number of policies or resources of the executive branch. As a matter of routine Trump surrounds himself with criminals and engages in criminal conspiracies to acquire and hold power. His campaign is currently considering hiring convicted felon Paul Manafort back as a consultant. Mueller’s investigative team found that Manafort engaged directly with Russian intelligence to help spread misinformation during Trump’s first campaign. Manafort ran Trump’s campaign in 2016, and later was convicted in one trial and pled guilty in another circumstance to bank and tax fraud, illegal foreign lobbying and witness tampering. He served about two years of a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. As part of his plea, Manafort agreed to cooperate with federal investigators, but was later found to have lied to them about several issues. Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with trying to illegally steal the 2020 election, including with the use of violence. Trump has been charged in Georgia for trying to defraud voters there as well—note that in both cases the criminal charges preceded criminal indictments by two grand juries and a recommendation to charge by a special grand jury in Georgia. Many of his co-defendants in Georgia also face charges or were at least partially involved in related criminal activity in Michigan and Nevada. A grand jury indicted Trump in New York for engaging in a criminal conspiracy of falsifying business documents to defraud voters there.

Trump has repeatedly professed his love for dictators, including Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Kim Jong Un, among others. These thugs all have access to significant (stolen) cash and know how to launder it. And they would dearly love US support to prop up their failed regimes. Indeed, the latest witness in the attempt to impeach Joe Biden, Alexander Smirnov, has been arrested by the FBI and is accused of taking money to fabricate details purportedly evidencing Biden’s corruption. The lies he told were supplied by Russian intelligence, according to investigators. The firm used to pay Smirnov has significant ties to Trump himself. Smearing Biden is an obvious effort to help Trump—again. Several members of Trump’s 2016 campaign were found to have collaborated with Russia to tilt the election in his favor, all while Trump sought to close a business deal in Moscow. Contrary to what certain political commentators have stated, the Mueller report laid it out in detail; read it for yourself here. The Senate Bipartisan Committee traced all the nefarious activity in even greater detail, spanning 5 volumes, here. Trump is facing numerous charges in Florida for violating the Espionage Act and the subsequent conspiracy to cover it up. Taking money from criminals or global despots is clearly not outside of Trump’s tolerances. That he would repay them with some form of classified intel or other highly sensitive information goes without doubt.

Trump has also called upon his daughter-in-law to try to solve his problem of legal costs through another tactic. Recently, he orchestrated the takeover of the Republican National Committee (RNC) by getting it to appoint Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump, as the new co-chair. She has vowed to use the committee’s funds for Trump's legal fees, stating “Every single penny will go to the No. 1 and the only job of the RNC—that is electing Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.” Even some Republicans have balked at this. The new chief counsel for the committee has a name that seems amusingly appropriate: Charlie Spies. In any event, to turn the organization into Trump’s legal piggy bank, Lara Trump and her cronies had to fire more than 60 people. Ironically, in an internal memo to new employees, the committee claims it plans to bolster early voting, ballot harvesting where legal, absentee ballots, and mail-in programs—all items Trump decried during his Big Lie conspiratorial campaign. This move, however, is not likely to successfully bail Trump out—donors are fleeing in large numbers and the RNC was already going broke before the Trumps took control. Still, the takeover represents a national security risk because these types of political organizations are easy venues for laundering foreign money.

Trump secured a $91.6 million bond from the Chubb Insurance company for his defamation judgment owed to E. Jean Carroll. In a letter to investors, CEO Evan Greenberg—a close associate of Trump—begged for forgiveness for the objectively risky bond, writing “I fully realize how polarizing and emotional this case and the defendant are and how easy it would be for Chubb to just say no. However, we support the rule of law and our role in it. We considered this the right thing to do and we frankly left our own personal feelings aside.” Greenberg also assured that there is collateral behind the bond though, oddly, he did not identify it. The blowback from investors appears to have persuaded the company not to fork over 500 million more for Trump’s bigger fine. On March 3, Trump met with serial fraudster Elon Musk and a number of big Republican donors, likely to beg for money. So far, Musk has been noncommittal, going so far as to dismiss the import of the meeting altogether. He blubbered through a response to a question posed by Don Lemon asking why Musk and Trump met. “I was at a dinner—I wasn't at a dinner. I was at a breakfast at a friend's place and Donald Trump came by. That's it,” he told Lemon. He continued:

Let's just say, uh, he did most of the talking. The normal things he says, there was nothing particularly groundbreaking or new but he, you know, President Trump likes to talk and so we talked. I don't recall him saying anything that he hasn't said anything and uh that was it, it was just a breakfast.

When bond companies, banks, and even the local dirtbags won’t offer Trump his much-needed bailout, is there any rational person on the planet that doesn’t think he will readily and willingly offer to sell state secrets or American military might t even worse actors? After all, he’s already been caught on tape sharing military secrets solely to satisfy his own vanity. He told an Australian Billionaire secrets about America’s nuclear submarine program. That billionaire went on to share that information with dozens of others, including foreign officials. And despite the seizure of documents from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, authorities know some extremely sensitive documents remain missing—documents that include:

raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.

What’s to stop him from selling out the country to save his gaudy trophies like Mar-a-Lago and possibly prevent himself from going to jail? What self-delusion must remain to associate a vote for Trump with patriotism? What self-delusion must remain to vote for any Republican who supports him?

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I am a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Certified Crime Analyst, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Financial Crimes Investigator with a Juris Doctor and a Master’s degree in history. I spent 10 years working in the New York State Division of Criminal Justice as Senior Analyst and Investigator. Today, I teach Cybersecurity, Ethical Hacking, and Digital Forensics at Softwarica College of IT and E-Commerce in Nepal. In addition, I offer training on Financial Crime Prevention and Investigation. I am also Vice President of Digi Technology in Nepal, for which I have also created its sister company in the USA, Digi Technology America, LLC. We provide technology solutions for businesses or individuals, including cybersecurity, all across the globe. I was a firefighter before I joined law enforcement and now I currently run a non-profit that uses mobile applications and other technologies to create Early Alert Systems for natural disasters for people living in remote or poor areas.

Find more about me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Mastodon. Or visit my EALS Global Foundation’s webpage page here.