It’s even worse than we thought for Donald Trump
When the news broke yesterday that Donald Trump is unable to come up with the bond in his New York civil fraud verdict, it was obviously devastating for him, though not surprising. Trump seemed to just barely scrape together the much smaller bond in the E. Jean Carroll verdict at the last minute. It was always difficult to imagine that Trump was going to be able to turn around a few weeks later and come up with a sum of money five times that large. But it turns out it’s even worse than it initially looked.
Trump’s attorneys are now admitting in court filings that they went to thirty different bond companies and were turned down by all of them. None of the companies even coughed up a fraction of the money. This also presumably means that the company that posted Trump’s bond in the Carroll case is declining to help him with his much larger bond in the New York case.
In other words, it’s all just the latest reminder that there are no magic wands. The fact that Trump was able to just barely come up with a last minute bond in the Carroll case was not a sign that he had the omnipotent ability to come up with unlimited money. Nor did it mean that, as so many internet conspiracy theories claimed, Russia was bailing Trump out. If that were the case, why isn’t Putin also magically covering Trump’s New York bond? Because nothing works that way, that’s why.
As I said yesterday, there’s still probably some remote outside chance that Trump will find a way to cover the half a billion dollar bond before the deadline. But if Trump’s people thought they had a plan for pulling that off, they’d be begging for a few more days (like last time), instead of just humiliatingly admitting that they were shot down by the entire bondsman industry and are out of options.
So now we sit back and watch the legal system continue to dismantle Donald Trump, even as he tries to fight back with ineffective parlor tricks. Letitia James is ready to start dismantling Trump financially the minute the bond deadline comes and goes. And Trump, for his part, is sitting around trying and failing to remember who Biden and Obama are. Even if Trump were at his best, he couldn’t win these kinds of battles. And he’s at the precise opposite of his best.
