Two of Donald Trump’s biggest legal nightmares will collide in Manhattan on Monday as he faces a deadline to pay a spectacular $454 million fraud fine and a pivotal hearing in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial.
The former president’s bank accounts could be frozen and his beloved buildings seized by Attorney General Letitia James if he does not obtain a pardon from an appeals court or find an insurance company to cover the huge bail.
Meanwhile, the 77-year-old will head to a Manhattan court for a hearing in what will likely be the first of his four criminal trials to begin. Jury selection was due to begin Monday, but the addition of thousands of pieces of evidence will push the trial back even further, until the November general election.
The collision of the two legal cases will make for another dramatic day in Trump’s political drama and financial saga that has dominated his preparations for his grueling rematch with Joe Biden.
On Friday, he claimed to have $500 million in cash hours before shareholders voted in favor of a merger of his media company that put his paper shares in the company at $3.3 billion.
Monday will put parts of Donald Trump’s real estate empire on the line. Jury selection will also begin in the Stormy Daniels ‘hush’ money case.
Trump has been stringing together a series of tactical court victories, as a team of lawyers makes executive maneuvers to delay criminal proceedings or get judges to consider motions that could end up pushing court dates well into the summer or after the election. of November.
But Monday could be the day Trump feels the most pain in the real world since he had to be arraigned and fingerprinted in a Georgia courtroom.
New York District Attorney Letitia James has said that if Trump has not fulfilled a $454 million court judgment against him by then in his fraud trial in New York, she will begin seizing property, noting that the precious Trump’s Art Deco skyscraper at 40 Wall Street could be in his sights.
He also appears to be eyeing Trump’s golf club in Westchester and the Seven Springs property, recording judgments in Westchester County.
The former president was furious on the Internet at the possibility that the State could act against him. He wrote a series of fundraising speeches in which he asked New York to “keep its dirty hands off Trump Tower.”
He then criticized online the judge who imposed the astonishing $454 more in damages, which increases by more than $100,000 a day as he moves toward appeal.
‘Arthur Engoron is a rogue judge who was intimidated by the big, nasty, ugly mouth of Leticia James, considered by many to be the WORST Attorney General in the US. She is a low IQ person who campaigned for governor, using my name. and he was DEFEATED,” he posted on his Truth Social site.
‘She and her PUPPET Engoron, who valued Mar-a-Lago at $18,000,000 when it is worth 50 to 100 times that amount, have destroyed all business prospects for the state of New York, which is already dead or dying. But fear not: when I become the 47th president, we will make NEW YORK GREAT AGAIN!’
“Keep your dirty hands off Trump Tower,” Trump said in the fundraising speech.
Letitia James has already requested a judgment in Westchester County, where Trump’s Seven Springs estate is located.
Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, on Wednesday called the idea that he should start selling his real estate assets “completely ridiculous.”
Trump went on a rampage against Attorney General Letitia James on Friday. ‘Arthur Engoron is a rogue judge who was intimidated by the big, nasty, ugly mouth of Leticia James, considered by many to be the WORST Attorney General in the US. She is a low IQ person who campaigned for governor, using my name. and he was DEFEATED’, he published
Trump’s real estate problems continued throughout the week. But on Monday there will be a new chapter, even after presiding judge Juan Merchán agreed to delay the start of the trial until at least mid-April.
He agreed to prosecutors’ request for a 30-day delay after prosecutors in the Southern District of New York turned over thousands of pages of material that the defense had not yet been able to review.
Prosecutors said the documents contained only a “limited amount” of new information.
Even with the delay, Judge Merchán is allowing jury selection to begin on March 25, a date that had been reserved for the start of the trial.
In a key ruling earlier this week, Judge Merchan ruled that former Trump adviser Michael Cohen, former National Enquirer executive David Pecker and former Playboy model Karen McDougal could testify, as could former Trump Tower doorman Dina Sajudin.
Everyone could talk about the details of an alleged money scheme to keep the silence at the center of the case. Cohen, who served time after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, testified that he created a shell company to make payments worth $130,000 to Daniels, who says he had an affair with Trump.
Judge Merchan also ruled that Trump cannot rely on an informal defense in the presence of counsel for conversations that took place with Cohen there. It was seen as an effort to circumvent the more formalized ‘legal advice’ defense, which would have required waiving defenses that are normally accompanied by attorney-client privilege.
The real estate drama came as Trump struggled to find someone willing to post bail, his lawyers wrote in a filing.
Trump’s team said it reached out to 30 institutions and could not find anyone willing to post bail for him. Trump, who previously posted $91 million bail in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, then posted Friday that he had $500 million in cash.
Among the properties James could target are: Seven Springs, his Trump National Golf Club in Westchester and Trump Tower, where Trump’s own 10,000-square-foot penthouse was a key point of contention.
James has noticed that he can see 40 Wall Street from his own office. “I look at No. 40 on Wall Street every day,” he said.