Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Panicked Trump SCRAMBLING to Pay Debt He CAN’T AFFORD

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

Trump, the self proclaimed “King of Debt” is scrambling now to get banks to issue him a letter of credit on his assets and a bonding company to issue 2 appeal bonds worth over $600 million dollars all in the next several days. Michael Popok breaks down the bonding process, the $1 BILLION in assets he will need to pledge to get the bonds, and the tens in millions in fees he has to pay, or else his assets could be sold off including his Penthouse in Trump Tower. Use code LEGALAF to get 10 percent off your next order at https://bookshop.org/?utm_source=meidas-touch&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=meidas-touch-legalaf&utm_content=brand Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Legal.ca. PRU. JustClimber. Paul, do you the king of debt? Well, no, she didn't call me. I call myself the risk of loss. Crackens registration details at cracken.com. legal.ca. PRU. JustClimber. Well, do you the king of debt? Well, no, she didn't call me. I call myself the king of debt. I'm the king of debt. I'm great with debt.

Nobody knows debt better than me. I've made a fortune by using debt. And if things don't work out, I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that's a smart thing, not a stupid thing. And I made a fortune. How do you renegotiate the debt?

Because you go back and you say, hey, guess what? The economy just crashed. I'm going to give you back half. I like debt for me. I don't like debt for the country. I like debt for my company, but I don't like debt for the country.

This is Michael Popak, legal AF. And that was Donald Trump in 2016, proclaiming himself the king of debt. And boy was he right in 2024. He's facing down the barrel of two major judgments that would cripple or bankrupt anybody, including Donald Trump won for over $500 million running with 9% interest annual

in the New York attorney general case. That one he's gonna have to pay up, shut up or pay up or lose assets in about 25 days. And the other for $83.5 million now with running interest even higher than that to be paid to E. Jean Carroll for her second defamation punitive damage and rape case against Donald Trump and that money's due in just a few days. So what does the king of debt do? How does he post the bond? Where is he going to get his money from? Who's going to lend to him if he

doesn't have the money? I'm going to break it all down on this hot take with these X-ray glasses. Let's start with the obvious. There's only two ways to post a bond to stop the enforcement of a judgment. You can always appeal. You don't need to post a bond to appeal. But if you don't post the bond, then the judgment that's against you is chasing after you, the 500 million and the 83 and a half million. They can, the judgment creditors half million. They can the judgment

creditors in this case the people of the state of New York and Eugene Carroll on the other side can start attaching, garnishing, loving against and executing against assets of Donald Trump. And we all know where those assets are. Everybody who watches my hot takes in legal AF can reel off all of the property that Donald Trump owns and all his bank accounts are fully disclosed to the monitor, the financial monitor that's been put in place by the New York Attorney General's lawsuit by Judge Engoron and she, Barbara Jones, knows where all the bank accounts are and their amounts, so you have that. Let's start with the math of the king of debt. He really is now.

Even though he claims to be in entities outside entities like Bloomberg, the Bloomberg News have evaluated him having about $3 billion, most of that, the vast majority of it, two thirds of it, it's not in cash. The most cash he has is if we take him out as word, which is a very hard place to be, is about $400 million, not enough to post the bond. If you don't post the bond, he's going to lose his assets starting with the $83.5 million later in the week. So you have to post the bond. Where do you get it from? You got two choices. You either put up cash of about 120% of the amount

that's owed plus a fair amount for future projected interest, that's one. Or you go to a bonding company, but the bonding company is gonna require assets or what's called an irrevocable letter of credit, a ILOC. You get that from a bank. The bank charges you a fee for that.

The bank needs to be secured. Its underwriting department needs to be secured with your assets, cash, real estate, jewelry, artwork, boats, planes, automobiles, whatever it is. And they'll issue you if you're on good terms with them. and the loan department believes that's a good credit risk, hold that thought. When it comes to Donald Trump, sure, they'll issue the irrevocable letter of credit. And based on that irrevocable letter of credit, a bonding company who also gets a fee will issue the bond and post the bond and lay out the money for the amount. In other words, the bonding company will tell the court in its filings and tell the bond and lay out the money for the amount. In other words, the bonding company will tell the court in its filings and tell the judgment creditors that if Donald Trump doesn't end up paying the judgment

after appeals are over, the bonding company will make the payment. The bonding company will then go against the bank and the irrevocable letter of credit and the bank will ultimately pay the money. So it's bank, bonding company, being paid to judgment creditor. That's how that works. And everybody makes money along the way, no surprise.

A bank, and we'll talk about the possible banks here, and the possible assets for Donald Trump, will charge somewhere around, oh, let's say, 12%. It's high, but you have no choice at that point. So just to do the math here 12 it let's assume Donald Trump needs a six or seven hundred million dollar loan He's gonna have to pay a 14 million dollar fee Right off the bat to the bank to get the irrevocable letter of credit to then go to the bonding company and the bonding company Doesn't work for free. They take a one or two percent fee on the total amount of the bond as well. So before he even gets his bedroom slippers

off in the morning for this bond irrevocable letter of credit arrangement, Donald Trump's gonna have to come up with anywhere between 15 and 20 million dollars just in fees. Now, if he wants to avoid all of those fees, he's going to have to come up with the cash, but he doesn't have enough cash to post cash bonds. It's still, it'll have to be 120% or so, or whatever the judge allows, wherever the court allows for cash bond payment paid into the court registry. The court has a bank account. The clerk takes the money in, segregates it for each case and holds it there at really no interest. So if it's a small amount of money,

like when Donald Trump got hit with a $5 million bond, sorry, $5 million judgment, 5.5 million last summer in the first E. Jean Carroll case, he just posted 110% of 5.5 million in the bank. And that was his bond, which E. Jean Carroll case, he just posted 110% of 5.5 million in the bank. And that was his bond, which E. Jean Carroll will be able to get ahold of if Donald Trump doesn't pay her first judgment after the appeals are over there. But now we're talking about huge sums, 500 million, 83.5 million. My guess is he's gonna try to save a little dollar and he's going to try to post in federal court in just the next couple of days about 85 million plus another 20%. So he'll put up maybe 100 million cash

in of his 400 million cash. So one quarter of that in the bank for the federal judgment to stay the execution of the judgment there. Otherwise they're going to start, you know, seizing property of his on the larger one. I think they're gonna start, you know, seizing property of his. On the larger one, I think they're gonna, he's gonna have to go this letter of credit from a bank at the 12% fee, plus a bond from a bonding company, and then post that as his super-cidious bond.

Super-cidious is a term of art we use for appellate bonds that are posted to stop the enforcement of a judgment. Now, what are the assets and what are the banks? That's my next step in the hot tank. Well, the assets are the ones we all know about, but just that properly valued amounts. We know that the focus in the heart of the New York Attorney General case

was this inflation or cooking of the books about Donald Trump's assets, but even Bloomberg is sort of independent and others have valued for instance, and I'm just gonna give you the Bloomberg valuations here. Mar-a-Lago, this 12 or 15 acre parcel on the beach in Florida, in Palm Beach County, with a club and hotel on it,

that can't be developed for other benefits, but could be used as a single family house. They valued that at $240 million. You know, I practice in Florida. I think that's about right for that parcel of land alone. That dirt alone could be worth about $100 million just to build somebody else's house on it right on South County line road in Palm Beach County facing the ocean. So you have that Trump tower and the triplex, the penthouse that he lives in, that has a reasonable value of about 40 million.

I agree with Bloomberg on that. Could be a little bit more. It could be about 50 million or 60 million, but let's call it a 40 million. Trump Park Avenue, another building that Donald Trump owns free and clear. It's worth according to Bloomberg about 85 million and 40 Wall Street, this huge,

hulking office building downtown right by the stock exchange, which I passed almost every day when my office was next door, that's worth about 280 million, right? So if you add it all up, it's about 650 million to $700 million worth of real estate just in those properties. He could pledge those to the bank in return for an irrevocable letter of credit at the 12% to then use to go get his bond. And I'm sure they are scrambling right now because the courts are not cooperating with him. Judge Angoran denied a staying the judgment and emergency application to an appellate court

in New York that oversees Judge Angoran denied his emergency application to stay the execution of the judgment at a lower bond amount. The federal judge has denied Donald Trump's ability to delay the enforcement of the judgment unless and until a new bond amount is placed. So he's staring down, you know, as I said in an earlier hot take, these are like he's playing with two sticks of dynamite and they're gonna blow up in his face. So I believe that whatever financial people he still has associated with him, they are scrambling to go get the irrevocable letter of credit, the pledge of the assets, the bond in place to post to avoid losing these properties. Because if he doesn't post the bond, they'll just sheriff sale and seize 40 Wall Street for the 280 million and Trump Park Avenue for the 85 million

his home. That would be great. Put them out on the street, make them homeless for 40 million. Legal AFs brought to you by bookshop.org. You may be watching or listening to our show right now, but are you reading enough? It's time to dive back into books and conquer that reading goal you set for yourself this year with bookshop.org. There's so many great books out right now that help you make sense of this moment. Or maybe you just wanna get away from the political noise

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Use code legalaf at checkout to get 10% off your next order at bookshop.org. That's code legalaf to get 10% off at bookshop.org. Keep reading and stay informed. So that's what happens there. Now who could lend to him? This is the last part of the hot take. Well, he's got a dump, even though Deutsche Bank fired him. They're not lending him money any longer.

It's been, it's very well known. He still has decent relationships with certain banks. I don't think Capital One is gonna lend to him based on their being sucked up into the New York Attorney General Fraud case. Deutsche Bank won't either. But latter, Capital, which is not really a bank bank, it's what we call a non-bank bank.

It's sort of as a fund that would be willing as an investment to lend Donald Trump this money is possible. There's a bank in the New York, New Jersey area. It's relatively small. Called Amboy Bank, named after the Perth Amboys in New Jersey. That could. There's a bank down in Florida you've never heard of called Seacoast National Bank.

But these are large, this is a large loan to make to somebody like Donald Trump for the banks of this size that I just talked about. If we're talking about Citibank Chase, Bank of America, all right, that's one thing. This is sort of their rounding error for the amount of money that they earn every day. But for these other banks, this is a big asset with a big red radioactive mark on it that's sitting on their balance sheet.

And so they're gonna be very careful in doing the underwriting. The other thing that I think is important big asset with a big red radioactive mark on it that's sitting on their balance sheet. And so they're gonna be very careful in doing the underwriting. The, these banks that we're talking about would require Donald Trump to pledge a portion of his cash, the portion of the $400 million that's left

and pledge all of these properties to support. You know, they wanna to be over secured. If they're going to lend them $600 million or so, they're not going to say, well, just give me $600 million in property because property, you know, has a variable price. Real estate market is up, real estate market's down. They usually want twice, at least twice,

what the amount of the ask is. So he's going to have to pledge, you know, like a billion dollars worth of property and cash and a personal guarantee. And the other problem for underwriting in these banks is the obvious. Donald Trump was just a judge to have committed persistent fraud in six counts

by a New York state Supreme Court justice. And on the basis that his books and records are not reliable and false and fraudulent. And that he cooked the books about the very thing he's going to have to tell the bank that it's true, which is his financial worth and the asset values. He, he that's, that's the case. He changed all the numbers by a multiple of 10 to 50 times what they were worth and lied to lenders, counterparties, insurance companies, municipalities, you know, businesses and governments and the like based on cooking the books. That's a problem when you're getting a loan from a bank. That's your

statements of financial conditions. Your personal financial statements can't be relied upon. Another factor is his longtime accountant auditor. Mazers fired Donald Trump and the Trump Organization and said that they had been lied to in the auditing and accounting process and in the tax return preparing process. That's a red flag. Two of his major subsidiaries got convicted of 17 counts of tax evasion a year and a half ago in New York. That's a major red flag.

His chief financial officer went to jail for a hundred days for tax evasion and fraud and perhaps is being indicted for perjury. That is a red flag. His former controller, Jeff McConnie, only because he cooperated, avoided being prosecuted. That's a red flag. His former controller, Jeff McConnie, only because he cooperated, avoided being prosecuted. That's a red flag. So when you, you know, these companies are gonna have to just look past all of this and say, oh, well, Donald Trump's a great credit risk. Considering he's blown through all of his PAC political action committee money in the

hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for his attorney's fees with no end in sight. And I left out another red flag. He's got another business record fraud case criminal that's being tried at the end of March in New York related to Stormy Daniels and the Hush Money Coverup. Another red flag. So how you get ladder capital, Amboy Bank, Seacoste National Bank, or anybody else to issue the irrevocable letter of credit based on what? They're just gonna have to take pledge of assets, do their own independent appraisal and evaluation, which they're running out of time to do, and then issue it. Otherwise, it's bond.

And if he doesn't do any of those things, if no bank will give him the letter of credit, no bonding company will bond him, despite paying exorbitant fees that he's going to have to pay. Then, then Leticia James and New York Attorney General on behalf of the people of the state of New York and the lawyer for E. Jean Carroll are going to start executing with the sheriff on the assets of Donald Trump. Some of the assets of Donald Trump could be his company, the shares and equity he owns in his company. In other words, E. Jean Carroll could end up owning part of Trump organization.

That would be cosmic justice. And the shares that he has, and I've talked about in other hot takes, he has 79 million shares as disclosed to the public in Truth Social, and in the new company that's going to take Truth Social public, meaning it's going to be a truth social. And then the new company that's gonna take truth social public, meaning it's gonna be a public company. And the stock is like, you know, floating around between $35 and $45 a share, you know, that's a lot of shares, that's a lot of mula. And so that's another asset that could be levied against.

I've been involved with cases where I've grabbed stock certificates and equity interest in businesses as part of a judgment enforcement. So they'll go after that as well. They'll say, all right, we'll take 50 million shares of truth social and put it in our hands and sell it on the open market. So watch for all of this to happen

as Donald Trump and his people continue to scramble. But this is like the Titanic, that or if you have Donald Trump's real estate empire and the king of debt but this is like the Titanic that or if you know Donald Trump's real estate empire and the king of debt, this is like the Titanic. He's already hit the iceberg and we're just watching slow motion sinking of his life into the abyss. You know, except there's no, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio singing on the, singing or, you know, I'm on top of the world, but he's not, he's not. This tanker, this cruise ship of Donald Trump's business hit that iceberg a long time ago.

And like I said, we're just watching the slow motion as it, as it, you know, kind of torpedoes itself down in sinks below the surface. We'll continue to follow it right here. Only one place on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. On a show we call Legal AF, you know it. It means exactly what you think. Every Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time. And then on hot takes just like this one, you can also pick us up on audio podcast platforms, Google, Spotify, Apple, you name it, we're there. So until my next hot take,

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no outside investor network. And until my next hot take, until my next legal AF, this is Michael Popak reporting. Hey, Midas Mighty, love this report? Continue the conversation by following us on Instagram, at MidasTouch, to keep up with the most important news of the day. What are you waiting for?

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