Trump lawyers say $454 million bond a 'practical impossibility' | The Excerpt

On Tuesday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Lawyers for former President Donald Trump say the $454 million bond is a 'practical impossibility.' USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Aysha Bagchi reports. The UN warns of dangerous hunger levels in Gaza. The Supreme Court has extended a hold on a Texas law giving police the power to arrest migrants who illegally enter the U.S. Plus, the high court lets stand a ban against the Cowboys for Trump co-founder using the 14th Amendment. USA TODAY Democracy Reporter Erin Mansfield explains how far-right conspiracy theories threw a voter integrity system into peril. See the Washington, D.C. cherry blossom trees as peak season nears.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Tuesday, March 19th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, a look at Trump's financial hurdles from his civil fraud case judgment and more. Plus famine is imminent in parts of Gaza. And conspiracy theories are putting a bipartisan voter integrity system in peril.

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Former President Donald Trump has not been able to get a bond in his civil fraud case to protect his assets while he appeals a $454 million judgment. That's according to his lawyers in a New York Appeals Court yesterday. I caught up with USA Today Justice Department correspondent Aysha Bagchi for the latest. Aysha, thanks for hopping on today.

Aysha Bagchi:

Hi Taylor. Good to see you.

Taylor Wilson:

So Aysha, what's the latest surrounding bond in Trump's civil fraud case here? And what did we learn exactly from his lawyers in this court filing yesterday?

Aysha Bagchi:

Trump's lawyers told us that he's having a lot of trouble coming up with a bond in this case. And he needs to post a bond by the end of this week or early next week basically to stop the New York Attorney General Letitia James from starting to go after his assets. That's the deadline for him to post the equivalent of what he owes in this case, which is $454 million plus interest in order to stop her from trying to get a court to help her go after his assets. She has already said that she is ready to go after his properties.

Taylor Wilson:

What are we talking about specifically here, Aysha? Is this real estate or which assets are they eyeing?

Aysha Bagchi:

Well, Letitia James has talked about how she sees the Trump building in Manhattan on a regular basis. So that doesn't mean that has to be what she goes after. I don't think she's going to lay out the entire strategy for how to go about this. And it may not happen, we'll still have to see, Trump does have some days left. But he is asking the appeals court to intervene and help him. Basically, he wants a court order to stop Letitia James from being able to collect and he's making this argument that we've gone to insurers and we just cannot come up with a bond. He says that they say he needs to have nearly a billion dollars in cash or things similar to cash like securities in order to be able to keep running his business, pay his other debts, and get someone to help him with this bond. And it's just not happening for him.

Taylor Wilson:

And Aysha, beyond this civil case, he's juggling all kinds of legal headaches across the board. I'm just curious how much more money he has to handle all of these other court issues and what's next for the mounting costs of his issues in court.

Aysha Bagchi:

Well, the problem is no one really knows how much money Trump has. He has made some big statements about how much cash he has. And in a 2022 deposition he said he had about $400 million in cash. We don't know if that is true. We're seeing what's happening as he tries to get these bonds. He was able to post a bond to stop advice columnist E. Jean Carroll from collecting on her $83.3 million verdict against him. He posted a $92 million bond in that case, and the insurance company said that it did get collateral worth 100% of the judgment when it gave him that bond.

But we don't know what's happening here. We see the statements from his attorneys that he's struggling and he's tried to use real estate as collateral to get this bond in the civil fraud case. And so far no one seems to be biting. So the question of what's going to happen to Trump and his cash really has to do with how much cash he has. We don't know the answer. And he may try to find other mechanisms to pay for his mounting legal costs. Already Trump has been exploring using PACs in different avenues to try to divert resources to this space. So it really remains to be seen how he's going to manage to handle all these costs and whether he's going to be able to post a bond by the end of this week.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Aysha Bagchi covers the Justice Department for USA Today. Great info as always. Thanks, Aysha.

Aysha Bagchi:

Thanks, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

Meanwhile, in other Trump news, lawyers for him and eight co-defendants filed an emergency appeal yesterday of a Georgia judge's decision allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to stay on the election fraud case against the former president. They argue the ruling does not go far enough by just forcing out Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade. Trump lawyer Steven Sadow said the nine are seeking to disqualify Willis and the entire DA's office, which was the basis of an initial motion filed in January.

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The UN's World food Program is warning that famine is imminent in Northern Gaza and is projected to affect more than 20,000 Palestinians by May. The report says 70% of the 300,000 Palestinians in Northern Gaza face catastrophic hunger. And the almost complete lack of access that humanitarian aid organizations face there will likely compound the problems of hunger, healthcare, water and sanitation. The report was unveiled hours before President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed efforts to increase humanitarian assistance to the war battered enclave, in their first call in more than a month. EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell yesterday called on Israel to open more land crossings. Israel has repeatedly blamed aid delays on distribution issues it says have been created by the UN and other aid agencies. Also yesterday, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that Marwan Issa, deputy commander of Hamas' military wing and one of the architects of the October 7th attacks was killed by Israel. Issa would be the highest ranking Hamas leader to have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October.

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The Supreme Court yesterday indefinitely paused a Texas law that would allow police to arrest migrants accused of crossing into the country illegally. The decision puts a hold on the law while it's being litigated. The Justice Department called the law inconsistent with the court's past decisions, which recognized that the power to admit and remove non-citizens lies only with the federal government. But Texas officials said the state is the nation's first line defense against transnational violence and that the law is needed to deal with the federal government's inability or unwillingness to protect the border. The state also argued the Supreme Court did not have to intervene because the New Orleans based US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is taking up the issue in April. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court yesterday let stand a New Mexico judge's ruling barring a Donald Trump supporter from local public office because of an anti-insurrectionist provision of the Constitution.

The decision came two weeks after the court said Colorado could not use that same provision to remove Trump from the presidential ballot because he's a federal candidate. Couy Griffin, a founder of Cowboys for Trump, is the only person who participated in the January 6th Capitol attack to be removed from office using the 14th amendment. The challenge to Griffin had been a test run for Trump opponents who successfully argued to the Colorado Supreme Court last year that Trump is disqualified from the presidency by that same Civil War era provision. Griffin, a former rodeo rider, was serving on the Otero County Commission when he participated in the attack.

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Far right conspiracy theories are putting a bipartisan voter integrity system in peril. I spoke with USA Today democracy reporter Erin Mansfield for more. Erin, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.

Erin Mansfield:

Thank you for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So Erin, what is this Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC?

Erin Mansfield:

It's a very mundane tool. It's about as interesting as the way the water gets treated. One of those government things that you don't really think about, but it's actually really important. And what it does is it's basically a team of data analysts who work with a group of about two dozen states and they help keep their voting roles up-to-date. And because they work with a massive amount of data, they also encourage states to do a little outreach to help them get people registered to vote. But it's essentially, you take a bunch of data from the Secretary of State, you take a bunch of data from the DMV, you take a bunch of data from the post office, from the Social Security Administration, and you try to make sure that the voter rolls are up-to-date. So that they don't look like our browsing history or the 50,000 tabs that we have open. So that they reflect everyone who's on the rolls, who hasn't moved to another state, who hasn't died.

Taylor Wilson:

So Erin, why do proponents say this is necessary?

Erin Mansfield:

Actually, under federal law, states have to maintain their voter rolls. But also it helps prevent voter fraud, which just to be clear, we know is exceedingly rare, but it does happen theoretically. Someone who moves from one state to another can't try to vote in both of those states as long as the voter rolls are up-to-date. Let's say someone moves from Kentucky to Pennsylvania. Well, if they're keeping their voter rolls up-to-date, and they've already reached out to me and asked, "Hey, have you moved? Can you update this for us?" And I responded and said, "Yeah, I moved." Or I haven't responded, and they put me in an inactive voter section, then they know. It really is voter security at its most basic form. And then it also prevents things like, let's say someone dies and they're still on the voter roll and maybe there's an absentee ballot in their name from before they died, sending it back in. I think there was one case of that. Just to be clear, very rare, but it has happened.

Taylor Wilson:

Erin, there are some conspiracy theories that have circulated about this system. What are some of those and why did some states drop out of this program?

Erin Mansfield:

There were Republican states who weren't so happy with the voter registration requirement that if you find people who are eligible, you maybe send them a postcard every so often to say, "Hey, why don't you register to vote?" But most of all, it was just conspiracy theories. And then it was also, "Oh, this is just the Democrats pumping the rolls. It's a liberal scheme. It's funded by George Soros who is liberal." And then Trump went on Truth Social and was like, "Republicans need to leave this." And so nine states have left. It started with Louisiana. It peaked at over 30 states and now it's at about two dozen states. So it's a little bit less effective for people because say I spoke to the Secretary of State Michael Adams in Kentucky and he was like, "Only one of our neighboring states is part of this now." Because for example, Ohio left, Indiana never joined. He's trying to figure out is this still useful? Because most people will move states, but they'll go to a neighboring state.

Taylor Wilson:

So going forward, Erin, what's next for the ERIC program?

Erin Mansfield:

It's continuing. There are two dozen states in it and District of Columbia. They're trying to get New York and New Hampshire in it. The governor in Virginia just vetoed a bill. The legislature was trying to get them to rejoin ERIC. From what I can tell from the people I've spoken with, it sounds like the height of the conspiracy theories has died down. People are still doing voter roll maintenance. I spoke to the Secretary of State in Missouri, he says they're just doing it in house. They have an IT staff, they do this kind of thing themselves. That's the other thing is for states that do choose to leave, they're trying to figure out what they do. Whether that means going directly to a state, for example, Florida, a lot of folks get older and die there. Maybe they reach out to Florida and try to get the data from them and do their own analysis.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Erin Mansfield is a democracy reporter with USA Today. Thank you, Erin.

Erin Mansfield:

Thank you for having me.

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Taylor Wilson:

And happy first day of Spring. To ring in the new season, check out a photo gallery of DC's famous Cherry Blossoms, a gift of 3000 trees from Japan more than a century ago. We have a link in today's show notes. Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. Back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump lawyers call $454 million bond an 'impossibility' | The Excerpt