According to recent reports, New York Attorney General Letitia James is preparing to seize one of Donald Trump’s properties following the controversial civil fraud case. James, who campaigned on a platform that vowed to prosecute Trump, noted she would take measures to seize Trump’s private property to pay the exorbitant $464 million fine he faces.
New York state lawyers entered Judge Engoron’s nearly half-a-billion-dollar judgment in the Westchester County online database. Reportedly, the move initiated the first steps a creditor would take in confiscating property, such as the former president’s 140-acre Trump National Golf Club Westchester and his Seven Springs estate in the New York suburb.
Trump’s legal team railed against the fine, seeking court approval for a reduced $100 million bond. The former president’s attorneys have suggested that securing the resources to fully pay the $464 million fine is an “impossibility.”
“The amount of the judgment, with interest, exceeds $464 million, and very few bonding companies will consider a bond of anything approaching that magnitude,” Trump’s lawyers claimed. “Despite scouring the market, we have been unsuccessful in our efforts to obtain a bond for the Judgment Amount for Defendants for the simple reason that obtaining an appeal bond for $464 million is a practical impossibility under the circumstances presented.”
Reportedly, Trump has until Monday, March 25, to pay the fine before James would officially move to seize the GOP frontrunner’s assets. During an interview last month, the New York Attorney General noted, “If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets.”
However, various legal experts, such as former Acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker, have called form Trump to challenge the excessive fine on the grounds of the 8th Amendment. According to this portion of the Constitution, which addresses “cruel and unusual punishment,” the 8th Amendment states, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
“But, you know, there are supposed to be no excessive fines and, you know, no cruel and unusual punishment. It’s a constitutional right. It’s our founding fathers knew this was a weapon used by the state to harm citizens that were out of favor,” Whitaker recently told Newsmax. “Well, you know, 250 years later almost, here we are with this same threat because they, you know, the founding fathers understood one thing and that was human nature.”
"*" indicates required fields
In other news regarding Trump’s overbearing fine, The American Tribune reported on comments from former president Donald Trump, where he slammed Judge Engoron’s ruling in the civil fraud case. “Judge Engoron actually wants me to put up Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for the Right to Appeal his ridiculous decision. In other words, he is trying to take my Appellate Rights away from me when I have already won at the Appellate Division, but he refuses to accept their already made decision. Nobody has ever heard of anything like this before. I would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices, and if and when I win the Appeal, they would be gone. Does that make sense? WITCH HUNT. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!“ he said.
Featured image credit: By Er-nay – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67718860