Why Donald Trump May Not Be Allowed To Sell Property To Pay For Lawsuits

Donald Trump speaks during a Fox News town hall on February 20, 2024 in Greenville, South Carolina. Trump may have to sell some of his properties to pay for recent fraud and defamation lawsuits.

Donald Trump might not be permitted to sell his business properties to pay the $548.3 million he owes from recent lawsuits, a legal expert has said.

Barbara Jones, who is now monitoring Donald Trump’s property empire, is to appoint a compliance officer to oversee the former president’s companies. That compliance manager will have the ultimate say on any property transactions.

Jones was appointed by Arthur Engoron, the judge in Trump’s New York fraud trial, after he found the former president had grossly inflated the asset value of his companies and could not be trusted to run the property empire.

When he delivered his final ruling against Trump on February 16, Engoron gave Jones 30 days to appoint a compliance director.

Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, told Newsweek that this compliance director “has the ultimate decision-making authority on operating or selling property. Trump could ask for sale, but he wouldn’t control the decision.”

Germain believes that the compliance director would agree to a sale if Trump requested.

The money Trump will have to pay from recent lawsuits exceeds his liquid assets by $112.3 million, according to Newsweek calculations, so the sale of property may be inevitable.

Forbes estimated as of September Trump had some $426 million in cash and liquid assets. Trump has been ordered to pay $5 million and $83.3 million from the two E. Jean Carroll lawsuits, for a combined value of $88.3 million.

He was also fined nearly $355 million in the New York fraud trial. Engoron ordered that interest be applied retrospectively on that sum. According to a statement by New York Attorney General Letitia James, that will bring the total Trump will have to pay to about $450 million.

That comes to a combined lawsuit total of $548.3, which exceeds the value of his $426 million liquid assets by $112.3 million.

Jones, a former federal judge, submitted a report to Engoron in late January. Jones stated in her report former president didn’t disclose payments of more than $40 million to himself, undervalued the annual management costs of the Trump building by $1.6 million, and waited eight months to disclose the dissolution of some of his companies.

“Absent steps to address the items above, my observations suggest misstatements and errors may continue to occur, which could result in incorrect or inaccurate reporting of financial information to third parties,” Jones warned in the report.

Newsweek contacted Trump’s attorney by email on Wednesday seeking comment on this story.

On February 26, Engoron ruled that Trump will have to pay roughly $354.4 million in penalties for overinflating the value of his assets. Donald Jr. and Eric Trump were ordered to each pay more than $4 million.

Trump, the current GOP frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, has maintained his innocence in the case and claimed it was politically motivated.

On January 26, a New York City jury ordered that Trump must pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll, a retired journalist, for statements made in 2019. He said she was lying about allegations that he sexually assaulted her inside a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s. That amount includes $7.3 million in compensatory damages, $11 million for reputational repair, and $65 million in punitive damages.

In May 2023, Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in damages last year in another civil defamation trial stemming from a denial he made about her claims in 2022. He has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing and has said he will appeal the verdict.

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