NEW YORK (AP) — A New York appeals court on Monday agreed to hold off collection of former President Donald Trump’s more than if he puts up $175 million within 10 days.
If Trump does, it will stop the clock on collection and prevent the state from seizing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's assets while . The appeals court also halted other aspects of a trial judge's ruling that had barred Trump and his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., the family company's executive vice presidents, from serving in corporate leadership for several years.
In all, the order was a significant victory for the Republican ex-president as he defends the real estate empire that vaulted him into public life. The development came just before New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, was expected to initiate efforts to collect the judgment.
Trump, who was attending a separate in New York, hailed the ruling and said he would post a bond, securities or cash to cover the $175 million sum in the civil case. Speaking in a courthouse hallway, Trump revisited his oft-stated complaints about civil trial and the penalty he imposed.
FILE - New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a press briefing, Feb. 16, 2024, in New York. Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump could find out Monday, March 25, how New York state aims to collect over 7 million he owes in his civil business fraud case, even as he appeals the verdict that led to the gargantuan debt. After James won the judgment, she didn't seek to enforce it during a legal time-out for Trump to ask an appeals court for a reprieve from paying up. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
“What he’s done is such a disservice and should never be allowed to happen again,” said Trump, who argues that the fraud case is discouraging business in New York.
James' office, meanwhile, noted that the judgment still stands, even if collection is paused.
“Donald Trump is still facing accountability for his staggering fraud," the office said in a statement.
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, which grows daily because of interest. The Trump attorneys had earlier , but an appellate judge had said no late last month.
Monday's ruling came from a five-judge panel in the state’s intermediate appeals court, called the Appellate Division, where Trump is fighting to overturn . Trump attorneys Alina Habba and Christopher Kise characterized Monday’s ruling as a key first step.
Siding with the attorney general after , Engoron found that Trump, his company and top executives on financial statements, conning bankers and insurers who did business with him. The statements valued Trump's penthouse for years as though it were , for example.
FILE - Former President Donald Trump holds up a copy of a story featuring New York Attorney General Letitia James while speaking during a news conference, Jan. 11, 2024, in New York. Trump could find out Monday, March 25, how New York state aims to collect over 7 million he owes in his civil business fraud case, even as he appeals the verdict that led to the gargantuan debt. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
Trump and his co-defendants denied any wrongdoing, saying the statements actually , came with disclaimers and by the institutions that lent to or insured him. The penthouse discrepancy, he said, was simply a mistake made by subordinates.
Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355 million, plus interest. Some co-defendants, including Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, were ordered to pay far smaller amounts. Monday’s ruling also puts those on hold if the $175 million bond is posted.
After James won the judgment, she didn't seek to enforce it during a legal time-out for Trump to ask the appeals court for a reprieve from paying up.
That period ended Monday, though James could have decided to allow Trump more time.
James last month that if Trump doesn't have the money to pay, she would . She didn't detail the process or specify what holdings she meant, and her office has declined more recently to discuss its plans. Meanwhile, the office has filed notice of the judgment, a technical step toward potentially moving to collect.
Trump maintained on social media on Friday that he in cash, but he said at a news conference on Monday that he'd like to be able to use some on his presidential run. He asserted that James and , who's also a Democrat, “don’t want me taking cash out to use it for the campaign.”
If the penalty is ultimately upheld, the attorney general could go after Trump's bank and investment accounts. There's also the possibility of going through a legal process to seize properties such as his Trump Tower penthouse, aircraft, Wall Street office building or golf courses, and then seeking to sell them.
But that could be complicated in Trump's case.
“Finding buyers for assets of this magnitude is something that doesn’t happen overnight,” noted Stewart Sterk, a real estate law professor at Cardozo School of Law.
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 covering what's owed.
Many defendants are able to get such a bond, but “judgments of this size are rare,” said Joshua Naftalis, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice.
“What makes this one unusual is someone who is subject to an enormous amount of money and has to come up with it himself,” Naftalis said.
The ex-president's lawyers have 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.
They asked an appeals court to freeze collection without his posting a bond. The attorney general's office , saying he hadn't explored every option for covering the amount.
The appeals court “chose a middle ground” by still requiring Trump to put up money but lowering the amount, Naftalis said.
NEW YORK (AP) — Hope Hicks, a former adviser to Donald Trump, took the stand Friday at the former president's hush money trial and recounted how his 2016 campaign became embroiled in a political firestorm over a recording in which he boasted about grabbing women without their permission.
Hicks, who served as White House communications director, is the first close Trump adviser to testify in the case, which accuses the Republican former president of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by silencing women who claimed to have sexual encounters with him.
Prosecutors contend that the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, which emerged just days before a debate, jolted Trump’s campaign and hastened his then-lawyer Michael Cohen’s hush money deal with porn actor Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Hicks described being deeply concerned after learning about the tape's existence from a Washington Post reporter seeking comment about it. She huddled with other Trump advisers and read some of the transcript of the tape to Trump, she testified.
“I had a good sense to believe this was going to be a massive story and that it was going to dominate the news cycle for the next several days,” Hicks testified. “This was a damaging development."
Trump has denied the allegations of extramarital sexual encounters. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee for this year denies any wrongdoing in the case.
Hicks, who is is testifying for the prosecution under a subpoena, acknowledged she was “really nervous” after stepping up to the microphone. Referring to her former boss as “Mr. Trump,” she told the court she last communicated with him in the summer or fall of 2022.
While no longer in Trump's inner circle, Hicks spoke about the former president in glowing terms as the prosecutor began questioning her about her background. Hicks complimented Trump multiple times in the first few minutes of her testimony, describing him as a “very good multitasker, a very hard worker.”
Hicks served as Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary and was one of a small number of early campaign staffers who joined his administration.
Former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, the prosecution's star witness, has yet to take the stand in the hush money trial. But jurors are already hearing Cohen's words as prosecutors work to directly tie Trump to payments to silence women with damaging claims about him before the 2016 election.
The second week of testimony in the case will wrap up Friday, a day after jurors heard a potentially crucial piece of evidence: a recording of Trump and Cohen discussing a plan to pay off an ex-Playboy model who claimed to have an affair with Trump. The former president denies the affair.
Prosecutors have spent the week using detailed testimony about meetings, email exchanges, business transactions and bank accounts to build on the foundation of their case accusing Trump of a scheme to illegally influence the election. They are setting the stage for pivotal testimony from Cohen, who paid Daniels $130,000 for her silence before he went to prison for the hush money scheme.
Trump's defense has worked to poke holes in the credibility of prosecution witnesses and to show that Trump was trying to protect his reputation and family — not his campaign — by keeping the women quiet. The defense also suggested while questioning an attorney who represented two women in hush money negotiations that Trump was, in fact, the victim of extortion.
The recording played Thursday was secretly made by Cohen shortly before the 2016 election. Cohen is heard telling Trump about a plan to purchase the rights to former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story from the National Enquirer so that it would never come out. The tabloid had previously bought McDougal’s story to bury it on Trump’s behalf.
In the recording, Cohen revealed that he had spoken to then-Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg about “how to set the whole thing up with funding.”
Trump can be heard responding: “What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”
Trump suggested the payment be made with cash, prompting Cohen to object by repeatedly saying “no." Trump then says “check” before the recording cuts off.
Prosecutors played the recording after calling to the stand Douglas Daus, a forensic analyst from the Manhattan district attorney’s office who performed analyses on iPhones Cohen turned over to authorities during the investigation. Daus returned to the stand Friday morning.
Jurors also heard more than six hours of crucial testimony this week from Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented McDougal and Daniels in their negotiations with Cohen and the National Enquirer — the tabloid that bought and buried negative stories in an industry practice known as “catch and kill.” Davidson on Thursday described being shocked that his hidden-hand efforts might have contributed to Trump winning the 2016 election.
“What have we done?” Davidson texted the then-editor of the National Enquirer on election night when it became clear that Trump was going to win. “Oh my god,” the tabloid editor responded.
“There was an understanding that our efforts may have in some way — strike that — our activities may have in some way assisted the presidential campaign of Donald Trump,” Davidson told jurors.
Trump’s lawyers sought to blunt the potential harm of Davidson’s testimony by getting him to acknowledge that he never had any interactions with Trump — only Cohen. In fact, Davidson said, he had never been in the same room as Trump until his testimony.
“I had no personal interactions with Donald Trump. It either came from my clients, Mr. Cohen or some other source, but certainly not him,” Davidson said.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal Trump Organization business records. The charges stem from paperwork such as invoices and checks that were deemed legal expenses in Trump Organization records. Prosecutors say they were really reimbursements to Cohen for the $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels.
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, May 3, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Curtis Means/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, May 3, 2024. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, May 3, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, May 3, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday,, May 3, 2024.(Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - Hope Hicks, former White House Communications Director, arrives to meet with the House Intelligence Committee, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 27, 2018. Prosecutors say Hicks spoke with former President Donald Trump by phone during a frenzied effort to keep allegations of his marital infidelity out of the press after the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape leaked weeks before the 2016 election. In the tape, from 2005, Trump boasted about grabbing women without permission. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Former President Donald Trump leaves court, Thursday, May 2 2024, in New York, following the day's proceedings in his hush money trial. (Mark Peterson/New York Magazine via AP, Pool)
Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump awaits the start of proceedings for his trial at the Manhattan criminal court, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in New York. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
