President Joe Biden joked at the Gridiron Dinner this past weekend about former President Donald Trump’s struggle to pay nearly half a billion dollars in fines resulting from a controversial civil fraud judgement against him in New York.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) — who ran for office specifically promising to use the law to pursue Trump for unspecified sins — declared that “everyone must play by the same rules,” though the Trump case was unprecedented.
Trump was sued for allegedly inflating his net worth under a New York law that does not require the state to show intent, and in which the banks he supposedly defrauded said they had not lost any money on loans given to him.
The Democrat judge, Arthur Engoron, delivered a summary judgment against Trump that denied him the opportunity to mount a defense. Now, Trump is scrambling to find a way to pay the $464 million judgment — including interest.
The former president was able to obtain financing for a bond for the more than $90 million he was ordered to pay writer E. Jean Carroll in a separate New York case, over claims of sexual assault and defamation, pending his appeal.
But Trump has been unable to find insurance companies willing to underwrite the massive bond necessary for the bond in the fraud case, meaning that he may have to sell some of his real estate holdings at discounted “fire sale” prices.
Biden — or his speechwriters — thought this was good fodder for a joke at the Gridiron Dinner, despite the fact that his son faces criminal (not civil) charges for his own financial dealings, which allegedly also benefited Biden himself.
Biden said:
Our big plan to cancel student debt doesn’t apply to everyone. Just yesterday, a defeated-looking man came up to me and said, “I’m being crushed by debt. I’m completely wiped out.” I said, “Sorry, Donald, I can’t help you.” (Laughter and applause.)
Trump must pay the bond even if he wins on appeal, meaning he could suffer financial losses despite being innocent. Fox News’ Charlie Gasparino told Neil Cavuto on Your World on Tuesday afternoon that forcing Trump to sell a large portion of his real estate portfolio to pay the bond could have an effect on the commercial real estate market in New York City, which is already struggling to recover from the pandemic, crime, and high-tax policies.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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