I want to thank Rawgod for this post. See, it is hard for me to hold the information in my head of all of Biden’s hard fought achievements and the ones he is still fighting to accomplish. But Rawgod put it in an easy to read and understand format. See that is what the republicans are trying desperately to obscure. They need and want to keep the public from seeing all the good Biden has done because their candidate screwed everything up only helping out the wealthy with a huge tax cut that benefited … him with large cutouts for real estate developers. WTF! Nothing Biden has managed to do profits him personally, but tRump did. Hugs. Scottie
He’s now on the hook for nearly a half-billion dollars across three civil cases. These are the rules for when and how he must pay.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Friday, Feb. 16, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. | Rebecca Blackwell/AP
Donald Trump has been hit with all three in the past nine months, with Friday’s $354 million penalty for New York business fraud by far the most massive.
He is now on the hook for over $440 million in civil judgments as he heads toward the Republican nomination — and as he prepares for one or more criminal trials this year.
Those criminal cases could put him in jail. And in the meantime, his escalating troubles in his civil cases are packing a devastating financial punch.
Even for a man who claims to be a billionaire, $440 million is a potentially crippling amount of cash to turn over. Can Trump afford the judgments? When does he have to pay them? And what happens if he says he can’t — or if he outright refuses?
Here’s a look at what comes next.
Can Trump afford to pay?
Trump’s company isn’t public, and he has famously refused to disclose his tax returns, so his cash flow situation is shrouded in mystery.
Even if he has $440 million in cash on hand — and it’s far from clear that he does — paying the judgments could wipe out his accounts, since Trump himself has placed his cash reserves in the ballpark of that amount.
Trump claimed in a deposition last year that he had “substantially in excess” of $400 million in cash on hand.
“We have, I believe, 400 plus and going up very substantially every month,” he said, adding: “My biggest expense is probably legal fees, unfortunately.”
But it’s unclear whether that number is accurate. That deposition, after all, was part of the very lawsuit in which a judge found that Trump has repeatedly inflated his net worth.
If he doesn’t have enough cash on hand, would he have to sell properties?
Trump would likely have to sell something, although it wouldn’t necessarily have to be property. He could sell investments or other assets.
What happens if he resists paying?
In the civil fraud case, which is in New York state court, if Trump can’t post the funds or get a bond, then the judgment would take effect immediately and a sheriff could begin seizing Trump’s assets.
The rules are slightly different in federal court, which is the venue for the $83.3 million judgment that Trump owes for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her. (He also owes Carroll an additional $5 million from a separate verdict last year.) Carroll could pursue post-judgment discovery under the jurisdiction of the judge who oversaw the trial. Through that process, the judge could order Trump to produce his bank account records, place liens or garnish his wages.
“I think he’s going to have to pay. And whether it requires him to sell or to put a lien on something to get a loan, that’s his problem, not ours. He’s going to pay,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said on CNN last month.
The judge, Kaplan added, will use “judgment enforcement mechanisms” to “make sure that he pays.”
If Trump truly can’t afford the judgments, he would have to declare bankruptcy.
Can Trump delay payment by appealing the verdicts?
No. In all three cases, he has to put money in an escrow account with the court or get a bond while he’s appealing the verdicts.
With the civil fraud verdict, which Trump has vowed to appeal, the amount to be posted or bonded is set by the court. It is typically about 120 to 125 percent of the judgment amount, to account for additional post-judgment interest that accrues during the appeal.
With last year’s Carroll verdict, which Trump has appealed, he turned over $5.5 million to the court, which was worth 111 percent of the judgment.
For the more recent Carroll verdict, which Trump has also vowed to appeal, 111 percent of the judgment would be $92.46 million. Trump has a 30-day window after the Jan. 26 verdict to either pay cash into the court’s escrow or get a bond while he appeals. If he chooses to file a bond, he will likely have to pay a 20 percent deposit ($16.66 million) and put up collateral, but it could come with fees and interest, making it more expensive in the long run. And it would require Trump to find a third party willing to take on the risk of loaning him money.
Does he personally have to pay the verdicts? Could he get his campaign or PAC or the RNC to pay?
The courts don’t have restrictions on the sources of funds used to pay judgments, and Trump would surely like to tap other funds than whatever money is in his own personal accounts.
He could transfer assets from the Trump Organization to himself in order to help satisfy the judgments.
Using his political vehicles to pay would be far trickier. There is a general ban on using campaign donations for personal uses unrelated to a campaign or the official duties of an officeholder. And as for his political action committees, Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at New York University law school, said they can’t pay Trump’s judgments.
“Campaign funds cannot be used for that purpose regardless of whether the PAC is the decision-maker,” he wrote in an email.
Besides, Trump’s PACs may not be able to afford the judgments, since he has been using them to pay the many lawyers defending him across his criminal and civil cases.
The Republican National Committee doesn’t have the same ban on the personal use of funds as Trump’s campaign committee, but paying Trump’s judgments could jeopardize its nonprofit status.
I just got home about 45 minutes ago and my vision is still more blurry than normal. I have been for years using an eye doctor at a place we will call company A. A small eye firm with two shops, great people, good doctor, and a wide selection of frames. Plus the glasses were a great price, far less expensive than the big companies. After your exam if you needed glasses you picked out two frames, they only charged you for one of the frames. Then you selected your lenses. One with all the features would be put in the frames you selected, the other frames would have just plain prescription lenses so you had an emergency back up pair. The two pairs of glasses often were half the price of one pair of the big local chains.
In November, Ron went to the big local chain eye doctors he has seen before because they treat his eye disease, which our small eye doctor did not, and they pushed him hard to get cataract surgery. Both of us have cataracts so we thought his had gotten worse than mine, even though his developed much later than mine. When he checked out, his visit was no charge because he had medicare. So we made an appointment for me, thinking it also would be no charge. But he needed a follow-up visit for a different test, scheduled a few weeks ago and they hammered him with charges. Cost us $188 dollars with his medicare paying also.
But being hopeful that my eye appointment would be covered under Medicare, we kept my appointment, which was this morning. I wish I had not. *** edit They charged me nearly $100 for my eye exam *** So they did some test on me they didn’t do for Ron, but every test they did for me was tests my other eye doctor did, but they did tests for Ron they did not do for me. But even before they gave me an eye exam they asked if I had watched the video they sent to me as a text. I said I did not. Turns out it was a video on cataract surgery choices. In the check in stuff, they gave us extra forms to fill out again before even examining me about if I were to have cataract surgery what choices I would want. At this point, they had not examined me to see if I had cataracts. Remember they had pushed Ron hard to have the surgery.
So when the tech finished, and unlike the other eye doctor I had the tech did all the tests for my eyesight portion where my first eye doctor did the tests themselves, she gave me a video to watch on different choices for cataract surgery. When the doctor came in, the first thing she asked was about the video, then launched into talking about the cataract surgery and how she wanted me to plan it for next year. She had not even looked into my eyes yet. She felt the left was bad and growing bad much faster than the right, so I should plan for next year and what options did I think I might want. I told her I would need more time to think on it. Later Ron told me the first option Medicare paid for but the other options ran thousands of dollars.
Then she quickly did her check in my eye quickly spewing numbers to her assistant operating the computer, saying scaring such and such at such and such in the left eye … but when she was done she went back to talking about the cataract. But she never talked to me about the scaring in my left eye! So then they had me sit in the waiting room for a person to go over glasses with me. I had brought a set of frames with me I liked and wanted any new lenses put in with the frames refitted to me.
What do you think they quoted me for just the lenses to be put in my own frames? Hold on to something … $920 for the basic / standard lens and $1160 for the preferred / premium lens. WTF. Remember at the other eye doctor I got two pairs, two new frames with one set of lenses being fully progressive with the photo gray sunglass thing with computer anti-glare for $650.
I did not buy the new lenses. I told them I needed to think on it, and I did not schedule a new appointment next year as they pushed me to do. I talk to Ron on the way home how I felt very pressured to have the cataract surgery and reminded him how they were pushing him to schedule his right way. They had sent me a video on it before they even examined me, and I felt the exam I got was less than our other doctor did.
So I am going to see if our other eye doctor is still seeing patients and if so we will both get exams, and as I already know I will need glasses I will get them there. But also I wanted everyone to know why I have not been doing much online, I am struggling more than normal to see everything. Best wishes, hugs, Scottie
What the fuck!!! This culture war against the LGBTQIA and the attempt to drive the country hard back to the 1950s has got to stop. We have had these fights, these arguments, and society has progressed into acceptance. They found one exposed nipple? Have any of you been to a redneck bar in the deep south? I went to a bar in Georgia when I was 19 and in the US Army. Man what I saw there made what I saw working in a gay bar in the 1990s look like a church picnic. One booth was reserved for giving blow jobs by the local bar sluts. I had to be very worried because they loved to get them some young army boys fresh from boot camp in training schools. They about do you on the bar stool. But that is OK to the haters because it is cis straight sex in the open, not an exposed nipple in a gay bar. Wait, I am confused, I thought only female boobs were sexy and to be hidden. Men boobs are fine to see everywhere. There are different kinds of bars for different likes. I bet you some of the high-end places are offering sex also, but those are upper society, so the police won’t bother them. The republican Christian Taliban won’t be happy until everyone is as repressed and unhappy as they are. Hugs. Scottie
Marching into a gay bar to issue citations feels a bit vintage in 2024. Nevertheless, over the weekend, the Joint Enforcement Team (JET), which is a coalition of Seattle Police, Fire, the state Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB), and others, entered two gay bars, The Cuff Complex and The Seattle Eagle, and started looking around.
And what did they find? A bartender’s exposed nipple and a few people wearing jockstraps, offenses that law enforcement can cite you for in Washington if you’re also selling alcohol.
At 12:30 on Saturday morning, a 10-member JET crew filed into Cuff, according to owner Joey Burgess. They came in with flashlights, scaring some patrons who left in a hurry. Inside, they saw the offending nipple, a violation of state law the JET may penalize in some way.
A group of Capitol Hill gay bars and clubs are teaming up with neighborhood queer community leaders Dan Savage and Terry Miller in calling for the state’s liquor control board and Seattle Police officials to explain what they say was a weekend crackdown reminiscent of historical harassment of Seattle’s LGBTQ friendly venues.
Ownership at the bars including The Cuff, Queer/Bar, Massive, and The Eagle along with Savage and Miller say that citations issued over weekend over clothing and decency violations at a handful of clubs recorded by the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board and so-called Joint Enforcement Team inspectors were targeted.
The group is asking for the community to demand the liquor control board explain its actions.
A coalition of law enforcement officials raided two Seattle gay bars and found nipples and jockstraps in close proximity to booze. Bar owners at Cuff and the Eagle say they may face citations.
I used to have a lot of respect for the police. In the past 12-15 years, that has really eroded away. When I see the times they have shot people because they felt threatened by somebody sitting in a car or reading that the person was shot 56 times, I question them. It’s become worse when they show up dressed like tactical assault troops for simple things. They are getting away with murder. I am not sure how much that I trust them anymore.
And if Trump assumes his dictatorship, cops will have his blessing to be non-compliant with laws and free of any accountability. That’s exactly what he said.
For me, watching the old man get shoved down nonchalantly in Buffalo was the tipping point. First time I used a porcine term to describe them, just after an expletive.
I’ve distrusted cops ever since I shared a house for a while with, among others, a police cadet. The stories I heard about what cops allow other cops to get away with!
And this was just run-of-the-mill police dishonesty and corruption. At the time, I wasn’t aware of how aggressively violent many of them are, as well.
Dude, you and I have a very similar take on this shit and I applaud you for the spot on comment. Being SWM I sometimes have to edit what I say but can always count on you to “send it”.
Even if there is a god/gods (I’m agnostic), I doubt that He/She/It/They would care about people seeing each other’s nipples and various body parts. He/She/It/They made them that way, after all, even if through evolution.
Being that this was open knowledge for many years. I mean, it’s the cuff and the Eagle and all they found was an open nipple and jock strap. Lol I too am wondering who’s behind this. At the liquor board. You know damn well that there’s some religious nut or right-wing POS behind it.
This follows closely upon the attempt to shut down one of the city’s two traditionally gay nude beaches (by building a children’s playground next door). Thankfully, that was nipped in the bud by an overwhelmingly oppositional public protest. Hopefully this will be too.
Brattleboro, Vermont built West River Park next to the traditionally nude (optional) beach on West River for that exact reason. No nudity within 500 feet of a park.
Remember when some liquor control guy took a snap shot of the Eagle balcony and caught some penises in the picture? They said they were going to close it until Dan Savage went around town taking pictures of himself in City Hall, etc with his dick out (public nudity is NOT illegal in Seattle) asking if they were going to close them down too and they backed off.
I know that they can only show ‘beefcake’ pictures on the monitors in bars, a bit amazing down in CA where they have full on porn movies going in some of the bars…
Ya, the last time I was in an Eagle there was someone locked in a cage in the center of the room performing oral sex and being urinated on by strangers. A nipple and jockstrap seem almost wholesome in comparison.
Seattle has a reputation for being a liberal haven, but in fact the SPD is virulently bigoted. Remember that they were under a consent decree for 11 years, effectively under federal supervision until they changed a racist culture that had led to the murder of a First Nations man. Parts of that decree are STILL in effect.
Nipples, jockstraps and alcohol? You can see more flesh, alcohol, and lewd conduct on a public beach in any Summer. Yeah, the originators of that raid on gay bars has some ‘splainin’ to do, and an apology to make. Seattle, you’re better than this!
2016, Americans elected a rapist to the White House. 2024 that rapist is running for the Republican nomination. Rapists gonna rape.
If you think that your liberties are protected by case law, – the Supreme Court, let me introduce you to the strict constructionists, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Any Barrett, Kavanaugh. Raids on gay bars, – you ain’t seen nuttin yet
Are we worried yet about marriage equality, about gay health clinics, about PDAs, about flags or drags, about our freedoms of association in or out of gay bars……….. Are we worried yet about camps, about quarantines, about being ostracised ? Are we worried yet about what the Evangelicals want to do to us?
I hate hearing someone say both parties are the same. Tell me a republican that would try to stop wealthy banks from raking in billions in profits from the poor people? Those people don’t think both parties are the same, they simply don’t have a good reason to support theirs, so they have to claim the other side is the same thing. It also is why the republicans are so desperate to impeach Joe Biden. Can’t let tRump a republican be the only one, we have to falsely claim democrats are just as bad. Not that tRump was good or correct, but that Biden is as bad! Hugs. Scottie
The right lives on hate, racism, and bigotry. They can not allow other religions, minorities, people different from them to have the same rights and opportunities. For some reason they feel that others having the same rights they have makes them less than, makes them lessor as people. They take no joy in the happiness and success of others. They hate the inclusion of anyone slightly different from them, and they react with temper tantrums. Look at the meanness towards and smug superiority they think they have over others. Instead of admiring the skill of the flight crew, the pilots and the plane stewards that saved lives, these people mock and slur others. Hugs. Scottie
They’re blaming airline safety issues on disabled people, Black people, women, and drag queens to gin up anti-diversity sentiment.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg/Rep. Lauren BoebertPhoto: Shutterstock
Conservatives are angry that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been, for at least a decade, trying to expand the diversity of its workforce, and they’re blaming gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
A terrifying video of a door blowing off Alaska Airlines flight 1282 went viral earlier this month. No one died, but the Boeing 737 Max 9 was forced to return to the airport and make an emergency landing. Some loose bolts around doors were found when other planes of the same type were later inspected.
She didn’t hesitate to launch homophobic attacks on the out Transportation Secretary and his husband, but now that she wants some of that cash for her district, she’s trying to play nice.
“The FAA is the latest victim of the radical [diversity, equity, and inclusion] agenda,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on social media this week. “Instead of prioritizing the most qualified candidates, the FAA will now look for individuals with ‘severe intellectual disabilities.’ How can anyone feel safe flying when the people responsible for their safety are being hired based on DEI rather than qualifications for the position?”
DEI stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” workplace policies that seek to hire and support candidates from diverse backgrounds. Right-wingers have increasingly targeted these policies as a “woke” form of “identity politics” while ignoring the workplace disparities that they seek to address.
The FAA is the latest victim of the radical DEI agenda.
Instead of prioritizing the most qualified candidates, the FAA will now look for individuals with 'severe intellectual disabilities.'
How can anyone feel safe flying when the people responsible for their safety are being…
Boebert was likely referring to a story that spread like wildfire on conservative media. The conservative New York Post ran a story about the FAA policy – which the Post stressed is “overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation” – with the headline, “FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities.”
The story noted that the FAA has a diversity statement on its site that says it recruits people with disabilities, including “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”
X CEO Elon Musk shared the Post’s story and wrote: “Just had a conversation with some smart people could not believe this is happening.” He also shared a post that claimed that Black airline employees lower the “average IQ of US Air Force pilots.”
The problem with their explanation? The policy has been on the FAA since at least 2013, during the Obama administration, and the Trump administration didn’t do anything to remove it. The Post’s story didn’t mention the fact that the policy is from 2013 and instead just noted that the FAA’s website was updated in 2022, which isn’t a relevant fact to the story but may have been intended to imply that the policy was put in place during Buttigieg’s tenure.
“The FAA employs tens of thousands of people for a wide range of positions, from administrative roles to oversight and execution of critical safety functions,” the FAA said in a statement. The FAA has 45,000 employees. “Like many large employers, the agency proactively seeks qualified candidates from as many sources as possible, all of whom must meet rigorous qualifications that, of course, will vary by position.”
Snopes noted that the rightwing “media coverage provided no evidence linking any DEI initiative with the Alaska Airlines incident” and that the investigation into the Alaska Airlines flight is still ongoing.
But disabled and Black people aren’t the only group that conservatives are blaming for the incident. Hate influencer and former realtor Chaya Raichik – whose Libs of TikTok account has been massively influential in spreading anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and has led to hospitals getting bomb threats and queer and trans teachers getting death threats – decided it was women’s fault.
That’s because Southwest Airlines made an innocuous post about an all-women flight crew shortly after the Alaska Airlines incident.
“All female flight crew? Go off, queens!” the Southwest Airlines’s X post read. The post included a picture of six smiling women in a plane.
“They’re openly mocking us,” Raichik wrote, sharing the post. “They know what they’re doing.” The implication was that supporting women in the workplace was somehow inappropriate following the incident in the Alaska Airlines flight.
Her post was viewed around 300,000 times and widely shared on the platform. Southwest later deleted their post celebrating the women.
Later in the week, Raichik raged at United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby doing drag at a Halloween party in 2011. Kirby is married to a woman and has seven children with her, but being a stereotypically masculine, straight, cisgender white man wasn’t enough to protect him from the right’s grievances about diversity in the workforce.
“This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of United. He’s a drag queen and has been incorporating drag into United,” Raichik wrote. “This video should tell you everything you need to know.”
This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of @united. He’s a drag queen and has been incorporating drag into @united.
Anti-trans activist and fifth-place swimmer Riley Gaines responded to the video, writing, “It’s time to bring back shame.” She also wrote that people “fly United at your own risk,” not explaining exactly how she connected the video to flight safety.
Cisgender, heterosexual white men on the right have donned drag in the past without controversy, including Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) boyfriend, rightwing media personality Brian Glenn. Greene, who has protested drag queen shows in the past, laughed off claims that there was anything inappropriate about her boyfriend doing drag because it happened “years ago.” The same grace, though, apparently doesn’t apply to CEOs of airlines that support diversity in the workplace.
Buttigieg, for his part, assured travelers that he has confidence in the FAA’s ability to keep flights safe, noting that they grounded 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 jets for further inspection following the Alaska Airlines incident. He explained that FAA staff is putting in extra hours to get to the root of the problem.
“I have confidence in any aircraft cleared by the FAA,” he told reporters last week. “The FAA’s doing a great job and [FAA Administrator] Mike Whitaker’s doing a great job.”
He added that, as a father, the images of the plane with the door blown out affected him.
“Anybody looking at those pictures has to be thinking about what you’d do in that situation,” he said, explaining that he was just on a flight with one of his children. “That is what’s on our mind.”
Secretary Pete Buttigieg/Rep. Lauren BoebertPhoto: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 