Donald Trump’s business empire is under threat thanks to a multimillion bond he has been ordered to pay, according to an attorney.
Gerard Filitti joined Mark Dolan to assess the litany of legal charges the former US President is facing ahead of this year’s election.
He believes Trump could be forced to sacrifice his companies to post a bond of $175m to delay enforcement of a $464m fraud penalty.
“It’s worth remembering that his assets are tied up in properties that are linked to one another”, he said.
Gerard Filitti says Donald Trump may suffer a blow
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“The valuation of his properties may not be as much as he says they are.
“Certainly, he is a very wealthy man by his own right. But the complexity here is that should he try to make good on this debt that he now has to pay, he would potentially have to unwind a lot of his empire.
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“When you purchase real estate, when you make all these transactions, you’re effectively using your other assets as security for loans and as security for complex transactions.
“It’s not just a matter of selling a building or a property. In order to raise money, he would have to unwind a number of deals which might result in the sale of multiple properties.”
Trump could be forced to contend with the issue before the November election, according to Filitti, who played down the prospect of the ex-US President ‘kicking it into the long grass’.
“This particular case could catch up with him in November if he is unable to post a bond to appeal this decision”, he said.
“Then he will have to make good on it, and that means he will be distracted from his campaigning by the need to sell assets, by the need to come up with close to $500m.
“When you add penalties for each day that goes on, he will be very much distracted from the campaign trail by the need to raise assets in order to make good on this judgment.
“Of course, if he appeals this, then it will be postponed past election day potentially, but even then it will be lingering.”
Trump said on Monday he ‘greatly respects’ the New York court’s decision to slap him with a bond, vowing to ‘abide’ by it.
He was found liable earlier this year for repeatedly inflating the value of his assets in a landmark fraud case against the presumptive Republican nominee for November’s election.
The decision to reduce the bond came as a reprieve for Trump after his lawyers argued it would be ‘impossible’ to secure a bond for the full amount.