'Crushing blow': Mary Trump says this is what keeps her uncle up late at night
Former President Donald Trump's niece, Mary, has made a name for herself as one of his biggest critics. Now, she's using her intimate knowledge of her uncle to theorize that the ex-president has a major concern on his mind that supersedes all others.
During a recent interview on CNN, Mary Trump said the nine-figure penalty from his fraud case, which a New York clerk entered in at more than $454 million when accounting for both the judgment and interest, likely haunts her estranged relative. The former president notably tried to get a court to accept a bond of $100 million rather than the full amount while he appealed Judge Arthur Engoron's ruling, though that request was ultimately rejected.
"I think, what keeps him up at night — other than a lot of Diet Coke — would be his concern, one, he doesn't actually have the money, which is a distinct possibility," she said. "We could say this offer to come up with only $100 million was a ploy to buy more time or to see if it would work. But he may not indeed have that much cash."
READ MORE: Letitia James ready to seize Trump buildings if he can't pay $355M fine: report
Mary Trump said that not being able to pay the full judgment "would reveal not just to the world but to himself that he is not as rich as he claims to be," and that it would expose him as no longer being "the savvy businessman he's been portrayed [as] in New York tabloids since the 1980s."
"That would be a crushing blow not just to his image, but to his sense of himself," she added.
When accounting for Trump's $454 million fraud judgment, his $83.3 million judgment for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, another $5 million judgment for sexually abusing Carroll in the 1990s and the $50 million he spent on paying lawyers in 2023 alone, the former president's legal bills hover in the neighborhood of roughly $600 million with no sign of slowing down. Indeed, his legal costs will only continue to grow, given that he needs to maintain teams of lawyers to defend him from 91 felony counts in four indictments across three jurisdictions for the remainder of the year.
Even though the ex-president isn't likely to win his appeal, he'll still have to post the full judgment amount plus 9% interest if he charges ahead in his plans to appeal the fraud judgment. New York Attorney General Letitia James has said she will begin the process of seizing Trump's assets if he doesn't pay up.
READ MORE: Trump owes almost $50M in judgments. Here's how much he'd get for selling his properties
Watch Mary Trump's segment below, or by clicking this link.
