So much for Donald Trump’s appeal

| 1:45 am EST February 27, 2024
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On Monday, Donald Trump filed a notice of appeal in his New York civil fraud verdict. Several news reports made it sound like this meant Trump was, you know, appealing. While that may technically be true, it’s realistically not true at all.

If you’re planning to appeal a civil trial verdict, you realistically have to post a bond roughly the size of the verdict. You can technically appeal a civil verdict without posting bond. But such an “appeal” is a joke, given that the collections process begins thirty days after the original verdict. In such case the money and assets would be forcibly taken away from you before any appeal could be heard.

While Trump did file a notice of appeal on Monday, he didn’t post bond. Nor did he make any moves to suggest that he’s going to post bond, or that he can afford to post bond. As of right now it appears Trump is indeed going to “appeal” the verdict in a pointless symbolic way that doesn’t actually delay the seizure of his assets.

Why would Trump do this? Because he’s senile. This is a guy who now needs a card to remember the names of his immediate family members and still leaves some of them out. There’s no possible way that Trump, with his dementia riddled mind, could understand the subtleties of needing to post bond in order for an appeal to matter. Of course he’d do something as senile as trying to appeal even though he can’t afford the bond. And his remaining attorneys seem to just be along for the senile ride at this point.

Of course there’s a ton of doomsday hysteria on social media about how someone wealthy is just going to pay off Trump’s verdict. But in the real world nothing is that simplistic. For all the obsessive tweets about how Putin or the Saudis are going to write Trump a check, the legal system could simply reject Trump’s attempt at settling his verdict with dirty foreign money.

Nor is there any indication that anyone stateside is interested in bailing Trump out either. Trump has seemingly been in dire financial straits ever since he left office. For instance he had to sell off his Washington DC hotel lease, one of the few profitable entities he had left. No one was bailing him out back then. There’s no reason to expect that anyone is going to bail him out now.

Nor does the RNC have the kind of money to pay off Trump’s verdict even if it wanted to. Nor have Trump’s PACs raised anything close to what Trump would need. Nor were Trump’s supporters able to crowdsource the money when they tried weeks ago. There are just are no magic wands in the real world, no matter how many magic wand ideas might go viral on Twitter.

So if you’re looking at Donald Trump filing notice of appeal without bothering to post bond, and you’re wondering what he knows that the rest of us don’t, you’re probably looking at it backwards. Trump is a senile man who no longer knows his own family, and his legal team keeps losing every battle. We’re supposed to believe that Trump has suddenly come up with a secret evil genius plan now? Hardly.