Donald Trump Claims He *Can Too* Pay Civil Judgment, He Just Doesn't Wanna
Also, of course the RNC is paying his legal bills.
Oh Lord, where to even begin with this.
At this point, everyone paying attention to the story of Donald Trump’s fraud trial in New York knows that former President Brainworms does not have $500 million in cash with which to pay the civil judgment levied against him. We know this because, well, for starters he hasn’t paid it in the month since the judgment came down. We know he has spent the last month scrambling desperately to find some surety or other to put up a $500 million bond while he appeals the decision. We know it because of widespread reporting that the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, is practically hopping up and down on one foot with excitement about seizing Trump’s assets to pay the bill. (Indeed, she has already reportedly filed paperwork indicating she will start the process of seizing Seven Springs, his golf course and private estate north of NYC as soon as the deadline passes on Monday.) We know it because just this week his own lawyers filed fucking court papers saying, “Hey, you know that $500 million our client owes? Yeah, he doesn’t have it, think you could cut him some slack and not keep him on the hook for it, Your Honor, sir?”
Then we all woke up Friday morning to a huge surprise: Donald Trump has the $500 million, he would just prefer to spend it on his campaign, thank you very much and good day to you:
Well, hard work, talent, and $413 million from his criminal lunatic Klan dad.
Regardless! We’re not a lawyer, but we think we probably would not make this aggressive and angry statement in public, where the judge in our case can read it, when we just finished pleading poverty as far as paying the judgment is concerned?
And if we were lawyers and had a client pull this move, we might say to our client, “Hey you cotton-candy-haired dipshit, we just got through telling the judge you can’t pay the judgment, now you’re telling him you can while attacking him as a partisan hack out to get you and telling him to go stick his own dick in his ear. Maybe you could not ruin our work by contradicting us five seconds later?”
YESTERDAY!
Of course we would also have a little voice in our head saying Hey, you’re the galactic jackass who agreed to work for Donald Trump in the first place. Lie down with ticks, get up with a raging case of Lyme disease.
The Republican National Committee might also be curious about this newfound wealth spilling out of Donald Trump’s pockets. It was not even two weeks ago that Michael Whatley, the new chair of the RNC, was asked on Fox News if he could assure RNC donors that their donations would not go to cover Trump’s legal fees. Whatley responded that “the president’s legal team has made it perfectly clear that they are not going to ask for any of those legal funds to be coming out of the RNC. So, that’s a done deal.”
Not that anyone believed Whatley, not with Trump having installed daughter-in-law and Trump-branded family Roomba Lara Trump as the #2 honcho at the RNC. And on Thursday, everyone who didn’t fall off a turnip truck that morning learned what we all knew was coming, which is that the RNC will cover Trump’s legal fees after all. Oh, we bet Whatley is soooo embarrassed:
Former President Donald J. Trump’s new shared fund-raising agreement with the Republican National Committee directs a portion of donations to the political account he has used to pay his legal bills before any money goes to the party itself.
The order in which entities will receive funds from big donors through what is known as the Trump 47 Committee was disclosed in the fine print of an invitation to a big dinner next month in Palm Beach, Fla., where top donors are asked to contribute up to $814,600 per person to attend.
The Times goes on to note that in the case of someone contributing the max, the first $6,600 goes to the Trump campaign. The next $5,000 goes to Trump’s Save America PAC, the vehicle that has been paying Trump’s monstrous legal bills, for which it ponied up around $50 million in 2023 alone. After that, the RNC gets the next $413,000, followed by Republican state parties. Sure, $413,000 might sound like real money even, but that’s only if somebody contributed $814,600 in the first place.
THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY!
The problem is that this payment system holds even if someone gives a lot less money. Say you want to donate $15,000 to the RNC while it operates under this deal. Trump and the PAC hoover up the first $11,600, leaving the RNC with a cool $3,400.
As the Times puts it:
In practice, what that means is that even modestly large contributors — anything above $6,600 — will fund the account that Mr. Trump has used to defray legal costs. And the fund-raising agreement came as Save America, which has averaged roughly $5 million a month in legal payments for Mr. Trump and witnesses in his cases, is on course to run low on funds as the spring ends.
This ridiculous arrangement means that there will be less money for down-ballot races that could decide control of Congress. Members of the RNC, or at least those who haven’t attached themselves to Trump like a school of golf-pants-clad remoras, might say to themselves, “Wait, he can pay his own bills? Why the hell are we then agreeing to insane fundraising deals where the money goes to Trump’s legal fees before it goes to literally anything else?”
Not that they are going to challenge Trump or the RNC over it, but the deal certainly is not going to help the Trump campaign’s problem with raising money from small donors, who at the moment seem to have fled the Republican nominee faster than an oligarch hopping a plane to a country without an extradition treaty.
And somehow, there is still a 50-50 chance that Trump will win the election in November, and that the Republicans will control both houses of Congress. Democracy! Ain’t it a kick in the nuts?
Yr Wonkette will not share any of your donations with the RNC either.
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1771198982993199140?s=20
Marge has filed the motion to vacate the Speaker's Chair. Here we go again!
this reminds me of when a student asked for an extension and then posted on Facebook how dumb my class was.