Trump Says He Has ‘Almost $500 Million’ Cash Ahead of Bond Deadline

Erik Larson
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump said he has almost $500 million in cash on hand, a hefty sum that would still fall short of covering the former president’s appeal bond due in three days in New York state’s civil fraud suit.

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The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said Friday in a post on his Truth Social platform that he intends to use a “substantial” amount of the cash on his campaign, which is already spending millions on his legal fees and lagging behind President Joe Biden in fundraising.

Read More: What Happens If Trump Can’t Post His $454 Million Bond

Trump’s post did not say he’d use the cash to post an appeal bond, which is due Monday and represents a major threat to his finances. The bond is set at 120% of the $454 million verdict against him, or about $545 million. Trump on March 18 told an appeals court the bond is “unattainable” because insurance companies that arrange them won’t take his real estate as collateral and will only take cash.

Trump’s bond struggle comes as he’s poised to get a windfall of more than $3 billion through a merger of his Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social, with the blank check company Digital World Acquisition Corp., and going public. The expected profit is only on paper, for now, and won’t help Trump arrange a bond.

@eelarson breaks it down https://t.co/zSVTWm6z6h pic.twitter.com/u04w9ezq87

— Bloomberg (@business) March 21, 2024

If Trump fails to put up the bond, New York Attorney General Letitia James will start seizing his assets. She proved during an 11-week trial that Trump inflated the value of his assets by billions of dollars a year for more than a decade to get better terms on loans.

James has already taken steps to seize assets if necessary, registering her judgment against Trump in Westchester County near Manhattan, home to two of his most valuable properties: Trump National Golf Club Westchester and the mostly undeveloped 212-acre Seven Springs estate.

Trump’s post called the verdict against him a “SHOCKING NUMBER” and accused James and the judge who issued the verdict, Arthur Engoron, of setting the penalty just high enough to wipe out his cash stockpile. Trump said in a sworn deposition in the case last year that he had more than $400 million in cash.

Trump, whose net worth was estimated at $3.1 billion before the verdict, has previously said he’d finance his own presidential campaign without following through, relying instead on small donations from his millions of supporters. Trump has also been known to exaggerate his finances, which are famously opaque.

(Updates with Trump telling appeals court March 18 that appeal bond is ‘unattainable.’)

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