Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves a pre-trial hearing on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, during a recess, with his defense team, in New York City, U.S., March 25, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

A New York appeals court on March 25 agreed to hold off collection of former President Donald Trump’s $454 million civil fraud judgment — if he puts up $175 million within 10 days.

If he does, it will stop the clock on collection and prevent the State from seizing the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee’s assets while he appeals.

The development came just before New York Attorney General Letitia James was expected to initiate efforts to collect the judgment.

Messages seeking comment were sent to Ms. James’ office and to Mr. Trump’s lawyers.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers had pleaded for a State appeals court to halt collection, claiming it was “a practical impossibility” to get an underwriter to sign off on a bond for such a large sum.

The ruling was issued by the State’s intermediate appeals court, the Appellate Division of the state’s trial court, where Mr. Trump is fighting to overturn a judge’s Feb. 16 finding that he lied about his wealth as he grew the real estate empire that launched him to stardom and the Presidency.

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After Ms. James won the judgment, she didn’t seek to enforce it during a legal time-out for Mr. Trump to ask the appeals court for a reprieve from paying up.

That period ended on March 25, though Ms. James could have decided to allow Trump more time.

Ms. James, a Democrat, told ABC News last month that if Mr. Trump doesn’t have the money to pay, she would seek to seize his assets and was “prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid.”

She didn’t detail the process or specify what holdings she meant, and her office has declined more recently to discuss its plans. Meanwhile, it has filed notice of the judgment, a technical step toward potentially moving to collect.

As Mr. Trump arrived on March 25 at a different New York court for a separate hearing in his criminal hush money case, he didn’t respond to a journalist’s question about whether he’d obtained a bond. Earlier on March 25, he railed in social media posts against the civil judgment and the possibility that James would seek to enforce it.

Casting the case as a plot by Democrats, the ex-President asserted that they were trying to take his cash to starve his 2024 campaign.

“I had intended to use much of that hard earned money on running for President. They don’t want me to do that — ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Referring to his properties as “my ‘babies,’” he bristled at the idea of being forced to sell them or seeing them seized.

Seizing assets is a common legal option when someone doesn’t have the cash to pay a civil court penalty. In Mr. Trump’s case, potential targets could include such properties as his Trump Tower penthouse, aircraft, Wall Street office building or golf courses.

The Attorney General also could go after his bank and investment accounts. Mr. Trump maintained on social media on Friday that he has almost $500 million in cash but intends to use much of it on his Presidential run. He has accused Ms. James and New York State Judge Arthur Engoron, who’s also a Democrat, of seeking “to take the cash away so I can’t use it on the campaign.”

One possibility would be for Ms. James’ office to go through a legal process to have local law enforcement seize properties, then seek to sell them off. But that’s a complicated prospect in Mr. Trump’s case, noted Stewart Sterk, a real estate law professor at Cardozo School of Law.

“Finding buyers for assets of this magnitude is something that doesn’t happen overnight,” he said, noting that at any ordinary auction, “the chances that people are going to be able to bid up to the true value of the property is pretty slim.”

Mr. Trump’s debt stems from a months-long civil trial last fall over the state’s allegations that he, his company and top executives vastly puffed up his wealth on financial statements, conning bankers and insurers who did business with him. The statements valued his penthouse for years as though it were nearly three times its actual size, for example.

Mr. Trump and his co-defendants denied any wrongdoing, saying the statements actually lowballed his fortune, came with disclaimers and weren’t taken at face value by the institutions that lent to or insured him. The penthouse discrepancy, he said, was simply a mistake made by subordinates.

Also Read | Donald Trump liable for $355 million, judge in New York civil fraud case rules

Engoron sided with the Attorney General and ordered Mr. Trump to pay $355 million, plus interest that grows daily. Some co-defendants, including his sons and company executive vice presidents, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, were ordered to pay far smaller amounts.

Under New York law, filing an appeal generally doesn’t hold off enforcement of a judgment. But there’s an automatic pause if the person or entity posts a bond that covers what’s owed.

The ex-President’s lawyers have said it’s impossible for him to do that. They said underwriters wanted 120% of the judgment and wouldn’t accept real estate as collateral. That would mean tying up over $557 million in cash, stocks and other liquid assets, and Trump’s company needs some left over to run the business, his attorneys have said.

Mr. Trump’s attorneys have asked an appeals court to freeze collection without his posting a bond. The Attorney General’s office has objected.

Donald Trump defended his real estate empire and his presidency in a face-to-face clash with the New York attorney general suing him for fraud, testifying at a closed-door grilling in April that his company is flush with cash — and claiming he saved “millions of lives” by deterring nuclear war when he was president.

Mr. Trump, in testimony made public on Wednesday, said it was a “terrible thing” that Attorney General Letitia James was suing him over claims he made on annual financial statements about his net worth and the value of his skyscrapers, golf courses and other assets.

His lawyers released Mr. Trump’s 479-page deposition transcript in a flurry of court filings ahead of a September 22 hearing where a judge could resolve part or all of the lawsuit before it goes to trial in October. Ms. James said evidence shows Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth by up to 39%, or more than $2 billion, in some years.

Sitting across from Ms. James at her Manhattan office on April 13, Mr. Trump said, “you don’t have a case and you should drop this case.” Noting his contributions to the city’s skyline, Mr. Trump said “it’s a shame” that “now I have to come and justify myself to you.”

Interrogated about the truthfulness of financial statements he gave to banks, Mr. Trump repeatedly insisted that, legally speaking, it didn’t matter whether they were accurate or not.

“I have a clause in there that says, ‘Don’t believe the statement. Go out and do your own work.’ This statement is ‘worthless.’ It means nothing,” Mr. Trump testified. Given the disclaimer, he said, “you’re supposed to pay no credence to what we say whatsoever.”

In a legal filing on Wednesday, Ms. James urged Judge Arthur Engoron to grant summary judgment on one of seven claims in her lawsuit — that Mr. Trump and his company defrauded lenders, insurers and others by lying about his wealth and the value of his assets.

To rule, Judge Engoron needs only to answer two questions, Ms. James’ office argued: whether Mr. Trump’s annual financial statements were false or misleading, and whether he and the Trump Organisation used those statements while conducting business transactions.

“The answer to both questions is a resounding ‘yes’ based on the mountain of undisputed evidence” in the case, Ms. James’ special litigation counsel Andrew Amer said in a 100-page summary judgment motion.

Even if Judge Engoron rules on the fraud claim, he would still preside over a non-jury trial on six other remaining claims in the lawsuit if it is not settled.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers are asking Judge Engoron to dismiss the case entirely.

They argue that many of its allegations are barred by a statute of limitations and that Ms. James has no standing to sue because the entities Mr. Trump supposedly defrauded “have never complained, and indeed have profited from their business dealings” with him.

Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination in next year’s presidential election, has been indicted four times in the last five months — accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss, in Florida of hoarding classified documents, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf. Some of Mr. Trump’s criminal trials are scheduled to overlap with the presidential primary season.

Ms. James sued Mr. Trump last September, alleging he inflated the value of assets like his Mar-a-Lago estate for at least a decade. Her lawsuit seeks $250 million in penalties and a ban on Mr. Trump doing business in New York.

Mr. Trump testified that he only had the financial statements made so he could see a list of his many properties and said he “never felt that these statements would be taken very seriously,” but that financial institutions would occasionally ask for them. Some of the values listed were based on “guesstimates,” he conceded.

Mr. Trump answered questions with such verbosity at the April deposition — veering from evasiveness to bluster to filibuster at times — that one lawyer worried his seven hours of sworn testimony could go until midnight.

It was a reversal from a deposition last year, before Ms. James filed her lawsuit, in which Mr. Trump refused to answer all but a few procedural questions. At that earlier deposition, Mr. Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination more than 400 times.

Mr. Trump testified in April that his company, the Trump Organisation, has over $400 million in cash. He claimed Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.5 billion and a golf course he owns near Miami is worth $2 billion or $2.5 billion. He said he believes he could sell another golf course he owns in Scotland to the Saudi-backed LIV golf league “for a fortune.”

“Do you know the banks were fully paid? Do you know the banks made a lot of money?” Mr. Trump testified. “Do you know I don’t believe I ever got even a default notice, and even during COVID, the banks were all paid? And yet you’re suing on behalf of banks, I guess. It’s crazy. The whole case is crazy.”

Mr. Trump is not expected to testify in court if the case goes to trial, but video recordings of his depositions could be played.

In his deposition, Mr. Trump testified that once he became President, he stopped paying much attention to his business because he needed to focus on world affairs.

“I think you would have nuclear holocaust if I didn’t deal with North Korea,” Mr. Trump testified. “I think you would have a nuclear war, if I weren’t elected. And I think you might have a nuclear war now, if you want to know the truth.”