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Former President Donald Trump has long been known as a real estate mogul with a habit of inflating his net worth. He has frequently overstated his wealth since at least the 1980s and repeatedly made exaggerated claims about his fortune despite evidence to the contrary.
So it's interesting that Trump — whose personal brand has reportedly decreased in value over the years and who is currently nearly half a billion dollars in legal debt — now claims he has about $500 million in cash lying around.
“Through hard work, talent, and luck, I currently have almost five hundred million dollars in cash, a substantial amount of which I intended to use in my campaign for president,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social in all caps on Friday. “The often overturned political hack judge on the rigged and corrupt A.G. case, where I have done nothing wrong, knew this, wanted to take it away from me, and that’s where and why he came up with the shocking number which, coupled with his crazy interest demand, is approximately $454,000,000.”
His claim goes against how famously cheap Trump has been when it comes to spending his own money on his campaigns since 2016. It also somewhat contradicts his lawyers’ concession in a court filing earlier this week that they have been unable to secure a bond for the full $454 million civil judgment. But even if Trump does have $500 million in cash lying around, it won't be enough to pay his civil fraud bond. As Bloomberg reported:
The bond is set at 120% of the $454 million verdict against him, or about $545 million.
With the clock ticking on his March 25 deadline to post bond, Trump has claimed that the fine is a ploy by Democrats to siphon money from his presidential campaign. On Wednesday, he pleaded for donations from his supporters, citing New York Attorney General Letitia James' threat to seize his assets, including Trump Tower.
Ironically, he landed in such dire financial straits in the first place because he was found to have committed fraud by “massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth” to secure deals while building his real estate empire.