Because they know he’s a liar and a crook.
Of course no one will lend Donald Trump the half-billion dollars he needs to put up while appealing his fraud case. Would you?
In recent months, the former president has racked up a series of costly legal judgments for his many misdeeds. And when I say “costly,” I mean slightly pricier than the Trump-brand gold sneakers. In fact, after summing up the judgments across all of Trump’s cases so far, he already owes more than the entire gross domestic product of several island nations — put together.
In the most expensive case, Trump was found liable for lying about the value of his real estate assets so he could get better terms on loans and insurance. In that judgment, he owes $464 million, after interest. He’s appealing the case, which was brought by the New York attorney general. In the meantime, a judge has said Trump must put up cash or bond to prove he’s good for the money and isn’t appealing merely to delay payment for a while.
Despite boasting about his deep pockets — and even saying in a deposition last year that he had “substantially in excess of $400 million in cash” — Trump has struggled to come up with the dough. So, he tried to get out of it. First, his lawyers asked to instead post a $100 million bond. After all, Trump treats every bill he receives as merely an opening offer — even when it’s a court ruling.
The judge said no.
Then, on Monday, his lawyers came back and complained that no one would agree to post a bond on his behalf. The company hired to help secure a bond package said it had reached out to “virtually every major surety in the market” and spent “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world.” The lawyers said a key challenge was that Trump wanted to use his real estate as collateral for the bond, and none of the major surety companies would accept it.
Got that? Trump owes this money because he fraudulently misrepresented the value of his assets, and now apparently no one will accept those assets as collateral.