One Story Slipping Under the Radar: Trump Needs To Indemnify His Sons

Trumpty Dumpty is always falling off walls and having great falls and that’s because he can’t keep his mouth shut. He has no impulse control. His ghostwriter on Art Of The Deal, Tony Schwartz, said that back in 2016 when this all started. He just blurts out whatever comes to mind and that might have worked out okay when he was the boss of a small, closely held family business. But it doesn’t work when you’re a candidate for president of the United States or the President of said country.

So here is where his latest blurting is going to get him. Here’s the gaffe.

Now, two things: 1. He just made it easier for Letitia James to come and get that money, should it exist (which it doesn’t.) This is Trump peacocking for the base and rationalizing what they’re going to see on TV. Even right-wing TV can only spin this so much. And more importantly, 2. this is the story flying under the radar: part of the $454M he owes was meant to indemnify Eric and Don Junior. They’re both getting screwed by Daddy come this next week. Listen to a couple of experts on this.

And Preet Bharara. Remember him? One of dozens of attorneys general who Trump fired when he took office. That debacle was a pale shadow of what he’ll do if he gets back in office.

As you just heard Mr. Bharara say, Trump knew that this was a distinct possibility that things would get here. And his lawyers damn sure knew it. There is a domino effect ready to happen. Not only is Trump affected but so are his sons. It’s been joked about on social media, “Do they know they’re not getting an inheritance?” The real question is, do they know they’re going to have to wade through some financial hot water themselves?

But despite knowing that he was about to need a $464 million supersedeas appellate bond (a bond that includes $10 million to cover his adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as well as interest accrued during the pendency of this New York civil suit), he chose to do… nothing.

Or, rather, he did many things: he played endless rounds of golf; repeatedly confused his sole remaining Republican presidential nomination opponent, Nikki Haley, with former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; engaged in perhaps the most deranged three months of social media posting American politics has ever seen; and at every opportunity railed publicly against the normal operation of America’s civil and criminal justice systems as though he were just becoming aware of them for the first time—despite demagoguing both to his own personal advantage for six decades.

What he did not do was seek an independent assessment of his New York properties—of which there are actually quite few; Trump mostly owns individual services or rooms in properties owned by others—as it might have revealed additional frauds committed by him in the past in trying to reduce tax bills or increase his attractiveness to lenders.

What he did not do was offer to put his properties in the trust of the New York court system, as that would probably have required the aforementioned independent audits revealing how much he actually owns in illiquid assets in New York. Which—once again—isn’t nearly as much as Trump would have had his followers believe for years.

What he did not do was try to sell any properties—which would have been a good way (had he started this process early enough) to avoid “fire sale” prices. But again, such a move would have revealed that all his property valuations are false (precisely what the court found in the case Trump now requires a staggeringly large appellate bond for) as well as the fact that his New York holdings are actually not particularly impressive.

In short, Trump did nothing after his September 2023 finding of liability for Fraud in New York to prepare himself, his assets, and/or his fans for the Monday deadline he now faces—which he’s sworn to the court it would be impossible for anyone to meet.

And in her reply brief, Letitia James explained that Trump could have gotten the bond from more than one carrier, that nowhere was it written that he had to have one lump sum from one carrier.

What happens now will depend on Trump’s sociopathy; media’s competence; judges’ nerve; insurance carriers’ integrity; Trump donors’ willingness to court allegations of corruption; the audacity of hostile foreign nationals; and the capacity of U.S. voters in the middle and on the right of American politics to accept that they’ve been had for years by a man who was never worth even 10% of what he swore to America he was.

The real joke is on MAGA. That’s the shame of it. Trump used television and his TV show which was on the air for 17 years to weave this fairy tale persona of the rich, powerful billionaire, the self-made genius with the perfect life, the gorgeous wife and baby, and other gorgeous children from other perfect marriages.

If you just listened to this man. If you just went to Trump University, if you just ate his steaks, drank his wine, played his board game, somehow by osmosis his greatness would rub off on you. And a significant part of America bought it. Not just the cult, but the GOP, and a lot of those people are now ashamed to admit they voted for this bum.

I don’t know how all this will sort out on Monday, but I speculate that his talk of an appeal, without a bond or a lawyer, especially the latter, will be rendered moot and Letitia James will begin the process of levying on his bank account — the one he’s bragging about that doesn’t exist. That should be quite humorous.

And as to his two oldest sons, who knows? They’re not so totally stupid that they don’t know who and what their father is. If $10M of that $454M was meant to indemnify them and that’s not there, then I guess they find it and put it up themselves. Or maybe it’s not possible to sever their liability from their father’s. I don’t know enough detail to say anything about that. So let’s just assume that they can put up the money themselves.

Whether that involves Lara siphoning it off of some senator’s reelection bid, or putting a second mortgage on a house that is already beyond their means, but this will stretch it to the max, who knows? One thing we do know, Lara will not finance her husband and brother-in-law’s needs with proceeds from her singing career. That you can take to the bank. Nor will Taylor Swift be inviting her to be a warm up act anytime soon. Ditto.

So we’ll see what happens on Monday, but it doesn’t look like there are any loopholes for Trump. Maybe he can raid the Truth Social coffers for some money, thereby driving down the stock and killing the platform, but the platform’s viability has been in question for some time now in all events.

Want to know how I would end this, if this was a novel? I’d take a page from the movie, A Face In The Crowd. Remember at the end when the people find out that Dusty Rhodes has been conning them this entire time and they abandon him, and he’s all alone on the balcony of his penthouse?  But it’s not a novel and the truth is stranger than any fiction. MAGA will never turn on Trump. They’ll give him all their money and believe he’s who they need him to be until death do them part.