President Trump’s legal team fought back as Letitia James took the initial step to seize Trump’s assets on Thursday after his attorney said he was unable to secure a bond to appeal the massive judgment in the NYC fraud case.
Letitia James filed judgments in Westchester County where Trump’s private estate and golf course is located.
President Trump has four days to either pay the judgment or convince the appellate court to allow him to defer the payment pending appeal.
Trump’s legal team has filed an appeal and requested a stay on the massive $464 million judgment.
On Thursday Trump’s attorneys sent a letter to the Appellate Division of New York’s Supreme Court and asserted Letitia James’ actions are “unconstitutional.”
“It would be completely illogical — and the definition of an unconstitutional Excessive Fine and a Taking — to require Defendants to sell properties at all, and especially in a ‘fire sale,’ in order to be able to appeal the lawless Supreme Court judgment, as that would cause harm that cannot be repaired once the Defendants do win, as is overwhelmingly likely, on appeal,” Trump’s attorney Cliff Robert wrote.
Trump’s attorney also Letitia James’ demand that Trump pay the judgment in full in order to appeal is “unreasonable, unjust, and unconstitutional (under both the Federal and New York State Constitutions) bond condition, which would cause irreparable harm and foreclose any review of Supreme Court’s deeply flawed decision in this case.”
Fox News reported:
Lawyers for former President Trump are blasting New York Attorney General Letitia James’ “unconstitutional” attempts to block the GOP presumptive nominee’s appeal and force a property sale as the deadline for him to post hundreds of millions of dollars of bond in the case looms.
Trump and his legal team have appealed and requested a stay on his $464 million civil fraud judgment. On Monday, his lawyers said that “ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is a ‘practical impossibility,’” amid attempts to approach about 30 surety companies.
The lawyers said the “enormous magnitude” of the bond requirement, which effectively requires cash reserves approaching $1 billion, is “unprecedented for a private company.”