When former President Donald Trump's lawyers informed the court on Monday that their famously wealthy client faces "insurmountable difficulties" in raising funds for a bond to cover the massive judgment against him in the New York attorney general's civil fraud case, Trump detractors may have felt relieved. With nearly $600 million in legal judgments, Trump, who has spent decades talking about his fortune, is facing a financial crisis.
To his critics, any impediment in Trump's path moves him further from the presidency and so makes the country safer. In this scenario, the opposite may be true.
The former, and possibly future, president appears to be in financial trouble, which could make him even more dangerous. He urgently needs money, or he will be compelled to give up some of his prized possessions to satisfy the courts. That acute need may make him vulnerable to anyone promising to help him out of his predicament, including America's adversaries and rivals.
It was Trump himself who highlighted the potential governing conflicts that could arise from relying on other people's money. He boasted, as he often does, about his extraordinary wealth, telling 2016 voters that his campaign, unlike his rival's, was entirely self-funded. That was not true, of course, but his logic was correct. Nobody could manage him, he asserted, because those who give you money want something in exchange. "I don't need anybody's money," Trump declared in his June 2015 presidential campaign declaration.
Trump now needs a lot of money. What would his creditors or benefactors expect in return?
It was previously remarkable that Trump reversed his position on the TikTok platform shortly after meeting with one of the site's wealthy stakeholders at his Mar-a-Lago resort. He had promised to prohibit the app in the United States for national security reasons while he was president. Now, with Congress attempting to push TikTok out of China's hands, he has abruptly switched sides.
Alarm bells went off as soon as Trump's bond situation became apparent. Illinois Democratic Rep. Sean Casten wrote on X, "The presumptive @GOP nominee for President is desperate for $464M (and counting)," calling him a "massive national security risk; any foreign adversary seeking to buy a President knows the price."
As a reminder, a New York judge last month found Trump accountable for unlawfully manipulating the value of his properties, declaring that his "complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on the pathological," and imposing a $450 million penalty plus interest. Separately, in January, a jury ordered Trump to pay more than $80 million to E. Jean Carrol after determining that he defamed her by denying sexual assault. (Trump denies any misconduct).
In addition to over half a billion dollars in judgments, Trump faces large legal expenditures in numerous civil and criminal proceedings, and his presidential campaign funds, depleted after funding his personal legal costs, are far behind President Joe Biden's massive war chest.
Anyone who believes America's adversaries are unconcerned about what could become an entry point for a Trojan Horse is delusional.
Incredibly, the former president wants to reinstate his 2016 campaign chief, the disgraced, Russian-linked, formerly imprisoned operator Paul Manafort. Even without Trump's financial problems, this would raise a slew of red lights, particularly with Russia.
Manafort had a history of working for tyrants throughout the world before meeting Trump. After working on the 2016 Trump campaign, he was sentenced to prison for financial violations before being pardoned by Trump.
He had already collected tens of millions of dollars from Russian oligarchs and pro-Kremlin Ukrainians when he approached the Trump team and, strangely, offered to work for nothing. Representing Trump at the 2016 Republican convention, he reportedly had the GOP platform delete a pledge to defend Ukraine, which was already besieged by Russia. It was a stunning reversal for the party.
Trump now wants him back in, of all things, fundraising.
However, there are several ways to support Trump without going through the campaign or the president. Consider son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose professional activities after leaving his senior adviser position in the Trump administration have sparked concern. In addition to receiving a $2 billion cash influx from Saudi Arabia for his investment firm, Kushner is now involved in Balkan ventures.
He announced last week that he is close to acquiring large real estate enterprises in Albania and Serbia. Regardless of the legality and (in)appropriateness of the deals, the fact that Trump's son-in-law, a former White House official, is making hundreds of millions of dollars in business deals abroad, including in places like Serbia, which has close ties to Russia, may open up more opportunities for cash infusions and interference by people looking to pay for influence in US politics in exchange for their preferred government policy.
If foreign money does come to Trump's rescue, it will not be the first time.
When Trump raced through his inheritance, forcing several of his enterprises into bankruptcy in the 1990s, banks refused to touch him, but Russian oligarchs stepped in.
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr., the former president's son, told a real estate conference in New York that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," and that "we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
There is a lot of wealth floating around the world right now, and many of it, if not all of it, wants to purchase influence. Foreign or domestic financiers may request favors in exchange for their assistance.
We have no proof that any Russian has addressed Trump, Kushner, or Manafort thus far. To be fair, Trump already coincides with Russian President Vladimir Putin's interests, notably in relation to Ukraine, a war Trump appears to want Putin to win.
Already, Saudi Arabia has enhanced Jared and Ivanka Trump's finances. We don't know what the Saudis expected in exchange.
Trump's "insurmountable" financial issues might quickly become America's problems, because he has a high chance of becoming president again, and he is currently seeking for a means to solve these problems at a cost that only he fully understands.
