Outlets are reporting that Trump has "counter-offered" to come up with a $100 million dollar cash bond backed by the existence of his "vast portfolio" of real estate in his New York State civil fraud judgment.

yahoo.com - Trump cannot line full bond

Per New York State law, a defendant appealing a civil judgement must still come up with a bond for the ENTIRE judgement FIRST in order to appeal it. AND they must continue paying interest on that amount during whatever period of time elapses for the appeal to be resolved.

This "counter-offer" essentially means Trump does not have the $454 million ($355 million for his original penalty plus 9% accrued interest since the inception of the original charges balloons to $454 million). Of course, this also means he doesn't have the $83 million plus interest to post a bond to appeal the E. Jean Carrol civil judgement either. In that case, he's already "counter-offered" to pay a $24 million dollar bond.

Now we will really get to see our two-tiered justice system in action. Wil this tussle between a "rich" defendant and the state court system of New York morph into some national / federal case of "free speech" being impaired by a rich guy running for President suddenly having to divert personal money away from a national campaign to cover personal financial obligations? Will some other bizarre interpretation or completely fabricated theory of law come out of the woodwork to take a rich guy off the hook? Or will the court system stick to long-established practices applied to millions of "little guys" and apply them equally to one "big guy" with a really big mouth?

From a financial standpoint, these counter-offers can be interpreted two ways. One is that Trump simply doesn't understand that rules apply to him, that everything is a negotiation or deal and that he still thinks he can avoid normal processes simply because he's an ex-President. The other is that Trump is likely FAR less wealthy than he has claimed. He is basically saying he's a multi-billionaire who cannot come up with more than $125 million in cash, even though if his legal team had a brain cell among the collective, they knew this financial pressure would be exerted as these civil verdicts started coming in. It's not like Trump only had 30 days' notice to find this money. These cases have been in litigation for MONTHS and were NEVER looking like they would swing in his favor from Day One. And the fraud trial cited a targeted judgement amount up front of $383 million, enough to get any accountant's attention.

Of course, these interpretations are not mutually exclusive. Trump DOES think that everything including crime is negotiable and Trump is likely a barely-billionaire rather than a comfortably set multibillionaire.

WTH