It is not just hush money and DA Alvin Bragg.
Donald Trump has another massive legal headache today.
The $450 million and counting civil fraud judgment is due
today.
He said he can't find the money.
So what will happen? Let's bring in NBC News investigative
correspondent Tom Winter.
And back with us are Charles Coleman and Caroline Polisi.
So it's a whole lot of money,
Tom. The legal team has said they've gone to 30
sureties bond companies,
if you will, and have tried to get this bonded.
But they're they've said they've laughed in their face.
They can't do it. What's up?
Right, a couple of things that I'm actually looking at
on my screen right here.
I just happened to pull up
40 Wall Street to see if there's any been been
any sort of liens or activity and filings on that
property.
They're not. I also just checked the docket a few
minutes ago from the a GS case.
There's nothing there yet either and it's unclear what,
if any filings will be made.
Today we're looking at the 40 Wall Street property right
now.
If you're also looking at that 40 Wall Street property,
you'll notice on the left hand side of that picture,
Katie, there is no longer a sign for Duane Reade.
So this under score is kind of the problem
Trump is having because there's no anchor tenant in that
building and it's difficult now in the commercial real estate
market,
which is where Donald Trump's,
a lot of his holdings are in New York City.
It's difficult for some of these buildings,
particularly older buildings to find a lot of tenants.
There's just not a lot of activity in buildings that
aren't
Class A and and to translate that into non real
estate speak,
you know the brand new glistening glass
skyscrapers that you we see going up around town.
Those are the ones that are tending
at this point tending to get the tenants
in them and that's not necessarily even though the 40
Wall Street address is very desirable,
it's a a building that's got a lot of history
to it that those buildings aren't really at the top
of what people are looking for right now.
So we're looking at the totality of the potential properties
that are there. And so the question is what will
the Attorney General's office do if Donald Trump in fact
does not get the bond?
Looking at history here might be somewhat instructive.
You know, Katie, we back in 2015,
we looked at Donald Trump's business bankruptcies.
There are six of them.
A lot of people think it was always just early
in the in the 1990s,
it was not. His latest business bankruptcy filing was actually
in
2009 tied to Atlantic City property.
And so when we look at Donald Trump's history,
and I've gone over hundreds upon hundreds of pages of
documents tied to his financials,
just specifically businesses associated with his business bankruptcies,
typically, he just gets to the point where he says,
look, do you want 2/3 of a loaf or half
a loaf or do you want nothing?
That's typically how he goes.
And so the question is going to be here
for the attorney general's office is what do they do
if Donald Trump just says,
you know what, I'm not going to do anything.
And so you got to have to figure it out
because the alternative of a fire sale or putting liens
on these properties is not ideal for the attorney general's
office. The first person that's going to get paid here
is the bank or the debt holder and that's what
the Donald Trump has on a lot of these properties.
So I think this is going to be a challenging
situation for the attorney general's office here going forward.
That's really interesting. I want to linger on that for
a moment.
But just the pictures that we were just showing on
screen,
that's Donald Trump in the courtroom right now for the
hush money payment.
You can see blue suit,
red tie. We'll I'll let you know if he speaks
up at any point during this this hearing and has
anything to say for himself.
And also just what happens in general.
But let's stick to the bond stuff for a second.
I
What does AG Letitia James do in the scenario that
Tom just laid out?
Tom is very accurate in that the Attorney General of
the state of New York is in a very difficult
position right now in terms of the choices that she
has to make. And the reason I say that is
if Donald Trump does not come up with this money
and she has to make a decision around which of
the assets she, he, she goes after,
she's employing a very particular type of calculus because,
number one, you don't know what these properties are actually
worth,
#2. You don't know what the mortgages are.
You don't know what the debts are.
So you know you, you're now engaging in an entire
different level of calculation that you do not do.
You're an attorney general, which means that you prosecute civil
cases for wrongdoing in the state of New York.
You uphold the law. You're not in the real estate
business.
And not just that, there's the evaluation of the appraisal
and everything else,
but and there's also the liquidation.
You don't sell property if you're the attorney General.
That's not the business that you're into.
And then keep in mind that on some level,
at least while you're figuring these things out,
you have to make sure that these properties remain profitable
or you have to try to do this.
So that's actually running a business.
You don't want to get involved in that.
So, so Letitia James has a lot of decisions to
make and it's very,
it's going to be very interesting if he does not
pay that bond immediately,
what she chooses to go after,
how the Trump team is playing.
This is interesting, at least publicly.
I mean, they've said they can't find the money.
You have Donald Trump son Eric on television saying that
bond companies literally laughed in his face that nobody ever
post bonds like this,
even though we've had reporters on who have said and
lawyers who have said no.
This is actually relatively common in that world of,
you know, high profile, high stakes.
But Donald Trump has politically been trying to fundraise off
this.
I mean, I've gotten multiple emails,
text messages from the Trump campaign or Trump super PAC's,
whatever, saying that, you know,
Letitia James has to keep her dirty hands off Trump
Tower.
They're using it. And I wonder,
is that a strategy of the legal team as well?
Yeah, you know, our, our friend Chuck Rosenberg said this
morning earlier
that, you know, although Tish James has this power,
she may want to be a little bit prudent about
how she goes about doing this.
She may want to think
twice for going after something today.
Look, this is ultimately going to come down to papering
this issue.
We're not going to see armed guards,
you know storming any buildings.
It it's, it's going to be done through sort of
paper and attachment exactly.
But you know I think she may,
she may do well to wait for the appellate court
to rule on this issue whether it's Tuesday,
Thursday, sometime down the road.
You know she has all the time in the world
really to go after these assets and and
you know on the on the bond issue
I think the recent sale of truth social and you
know those types of issues will
be leveraged. I think likely Trump will find a way
to cobble together the money.
I don't think he's gonna file for bankruptcy.
He's potentially made a couple billion dollars off the sale
of truth,
social or or it going public today.