周一两大法律威胁同时出现，特朗普将面临他最大的恐惧
【中美创新时报2024年3月25日讯】（记者温友平编译）预计唐纳德·特朗普周一早上将在一位纽约法官的法庭上度过，这位法官可能很快就会主持他的刑事审判，并最终将他投入监狱。 这甚至还不是特朗普当天最担心的法律困境。《纽约时报》记者玛吉·哈伯曼（Maggie Haberman）和本·普罗特斯（Ben Protess）对此作了下述报道。
他在曼哈顿刑事起诉中被指控掩盖性丑闻，为自己登上总统宝座铺平道路。此次听证会召开之际，他正忙于避免因另一起案件的 4.54 亿美元判决而引发的金融危机。对前总统及其家族企业提起民事欺诈诉讼的纽约总检察长利蒂西亚·詹姆斯（Letitia James）最早可能会在周一开始收取费用。
为了避免对特朗普集团造成致命威胁，特朗普必须说服另一家公司代表他交纳保证金，并承诺如果他在未决上诉中败诉且未能付款，该公司将承担判决的责任。然而，特朗普的律师在法庭文件中表示，获得这笔债券“实际上是不可能的”，因为他需要承诺提供约 5.5 亿美元的现金和流动投资作为债券公司的抵押品——这一承认暴露了特朗普的现金紧缩状况。
除非特朗普在最后一刻达成协议，否则詹姆斯可能会冻结他的银行账户，并开始漫长而复杂的过程，没收他的部分财产。除非特朗普的律师取得不可能的法律胜利，否则他的刑事案件的法官可能会将审判日期最快定于下个月。
在同一天、同一座城市发出的双重威胁，具体化了特朗普最大且持续时间最长的两个担忧：刑事定罪和公众认为他没有他声称的那么多现金。
几十年来，特朗普向他人脉广泛的父亲和他自己无情的律师兼掮客罗伊·科恩学习，采用了一系列广泛的策略来消除这些恐惧。 在抵御了地方和联邦调查之后，更不用说财务损失了，特朗普开始相信任何问题都可以通过个人关系和大量资金来解决。
“如果特朗普用一件事来赢得比赛，那一定是金钱，”前赌场高管杰克·奥唐纳(Jack O’Donnell)说，他在 20 世纪 90 年代初期为特朗普工作，并写了一本关于他的揭露真相的书。 “如果他比某人有更多的钱，那么他就是赢家，而另一个人就是输家。 如果有人比特朗普更有钱，他就会担心有人会说他输给了那个人。”
特朗普还四次描述成为刑事被告的耻辱。尽管他的顾问利用这些起诉书在筹款和激励共和党基础方面发挥了巨大作用，但特朗普承认这些指控让他感到痛苦。
“没有人愿意被起诉，”特朗普六月在飞机上对记者说。 “我不在乎我的民意调查数字上升了很多。 我不想被起诉。我从未被起诉。 我经历了我的一生，现在我每两个月就会被起诉。”
对于一个在此之前一直在漫长的公共生活中小心翼翼地避开执法部门审查的人来说，这是一个巨大的震惊。
他在 20 世纪 70 年代中期因一次土地征用而受到刑事调查，但毫发无伤。一名联邦特别检察官审查了特朗普 2016 年竞选活动与俄罗斯之间可能存在的联系，以及他作为总统阻碍调查的努力，并建议不提出指控。 他两次被民主党领导的众议院弹劾，但参议院两次没有对他定罪。
“他太幸运了，没有人遇到过比这个人更糟糕的对手，”在特别检察官调查期间在特朗普白宫工作的律师泰·科布说，他对这位前总统提出了尖锐的批评。
这在一定程度上是运气，但他的公共关系策略也得到了回报。特朗普采取了一系列赤裸裸的策略——攻击检察官“腐败”并犯有与他被怀疑的行为相同的罪行——以及施加压力的魅力。
特朗普珍贵的关系之一是与数十年来担任曼哈顿地区检察官的罗伯特·摩根索(Robert Morgenthau)。
摩根索在任期间，曾私下开玩笑说，他最喜欢的慈善机构警察体育联盟是特朗普唯一经常捐赠的慈善机构。据两位知情人士透露，当特朗普在政治上支持摩根索时，特朗普组织的一些官员被告知，他们需要给地区检察官的竞选活动开具自己的支票。 （与 2019 年去世的摩根索共事的人表示，他们的办公桌上没有任何直接涉及特朗普的事情需要调查。）
现在由阿尔文·布拉格担任的地方检察官办公室是去年第一个起诉特朗普的办公室，随后其他检察官也纷纷效仿。这位前总统私下里对他家乡的地区检察官竟然敢来追捕他表示难以置信。
2021年，当该办公室加紧调查时，特朗普对采访者表示，“鲍勃·摩根索不会容忍这种行为。”
布拉格的案件涉及特朗普个人的一个尴尬事件：向色情演员斯托米·丹尼尔斯支付 13 万美元封口费，旨在埋葬她与特朗普发生性接触的故事。当时他的中间人迈克尔·科恩支付了这笔费用。特朗普否认了这一事件，并被指控伪造有关他向科恩报销的商业记录。
特朗普的律师正寻求将审判推迟到选举日之后，正如他们在每次法律纠纷中所做的那样。如果特朗普连任，针对他的案件可能会逐渐停止。
主审此案的纽约法官 Juan Merchan 最近将审判推迟了三周，直至 4 月 15 日，周一的听证会将决定他是否进一步推迟审判。
尽管特朗普的律师尽了最大努力来拖延或破坏此案，但他的顾问们最不关心的是起诉书。 他们认为，尽管存在一些令人难堪的细节，但对共和党推定候选人来说，这在政治上造成的损害最小。
然而，纽约总检察长的民事欺诈案指控特朗普过度夸大其净资产，这触动了这位前总统特别敏感的神经。
特朗普的财富以数十亿为单位，这一数字很大程度上来自于他的财产价值。尽管对房地产进行估值与其说是一门科学，不如说是一门艺术，但总检察长对他的一些所谓的估计提出了质疑，称其严重夸大，并得出结论，他将自己的净资产夸大了多达 20 亿美元。
然后是他的现金。特朗普辩称，作为一名房地产开发商，他的流动性相对较高，并在去年的一份证词中表示，他拥有超过 4 亿美元的现金。
尽管《纽约时报》无法核实确切数字，但记录和采访显示，他最近拥有超过3.5亿美元的现金以及可以紧急出售的股票和其他投资。虽然意义重大，但还不足以获得上诉保证金。
通常，当面临巨大的财务问题时，特朗普拒绝承认有任何问题，这可以追溯到 20 世纪 90 年代初他的企业几乎崩溃时。认识他多年的人说，他已经习惯于相信自己可以表现出等待问题解决，直到情况发生变化，指望在最后一刻进行某种救援。
20 世纪 90 年代，尽管他因在新泽西州大西洋城开发泰姬陵赌场而耗资巨大，但银行还是救助了他。
随着詹姆斯准备开始执行 4.54 亿美元的欺诈判决，特朗普似乎也希望命运能出现类似的转变。 例如，他可以尝试从私募股权公司或对冲基金获得贷款。他还希望上诉法院暂停判决。
此外，他还可以从他的社交媒体公司获得意外之财，该公司的股票最早将于周一开始在股市交易。他所持股份目前价值约 30 亿美元，但可能为时已晚：六个月内禁止他出售股份。尽管特朗普可以找到绕过这一限制的方法，使他能够利用自己的股份为上诉保证金筹集现金，但此类交易似乎不会很快达成。
周五，他的“真相社交”平台上的一篇帖子反映了特朗普的不安全感。他（错误地）声称自己拥有近 5 亿美元现金，并且还（错误地）声称他一直计划用这笔钱来资助自己的竞选活动；事实上，他上次为自己的竞选花钱是在 2016 年，而这笔钱仍然远低于他声称的预算。
但他的帖子至少诚实地说明了一件事：对他来说，4.54 亿美元的判决是一个“令人震惊的数字”。
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
题图：唐纳德·特朗普预计将于周一早上出现在曼哈顿法官胡安·曼努埃尔·默查恩的法庭上。 ANGELA WEISS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
附原英文报道：
Trump will face his greatest fears as two legal threats coincide Monday
By Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess New York Times,Updated March 24, 2024
NEW YORK — Donald Trump is expected to spend his Monday morning in the courtroom of a New York judge who might soon preside over his criminal trial and, ultimately, throw him behind bars. And that’s not even the legal predicament that worries Trump most that day.
The hearing in his Manhattan criminal prosecution — in which he is accused of covering up a sex scandal to pave his way to the presidency — comes as he races to fend off a financial crisis arising from a $454 million judgment in another case. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought that civil fraud suit against the former president and his family business, might begin to collect as soon as Monday.
To avoid a mortal threat to the Trump Organization, Trump must persuade another company to post a bond on his behalf, promising that it will cover the judgment if he loses a pending appeal and fails to pay. Yet Trump’s lawyers in court papers said that securing the bond would be a “practical impossibility,” because he would need to pledge about $550 million in cash and liquid investments as collateral to the bond company — an admission that laid bare Trump’s cash crunch.
Unless Trump strikes an eleventh-hour deal, James could freeze his bank accounts, and begin the long and complicated process of seizing some of his properties. And barring Trump’s lawyers achieving an improbable legal triumph, the judge in his criminal case could set a trial date for as soon as next month.
The twin threats — on the same day, in the same city — crystallize two of Trump’s greatest and longest-held fears: a criminal conviction and a public perception that he does not have as much cash as he claims.
For decades, Trump employed a broad array of tactics to keep those fears at bay, learning from his well-connected father and his own ruthless lawyer and fixer, Roy Cohn. After fending off local and federal investigations, not to mention financial ruin, Trump came to believe that any problems could be solved by personal connections — and a whole lot of money.
“If Trump uses one thing to score the game, it has always been money,” said Jack O’Donnell, a former casino executive who worked for Trump in the early 1990s and wrote a tell-all book about him. “If he has more money than someone, he is winning and the other person is losing. And if someone has more money than Trump, he has the fear that someone will say he is losing to that person.”
Trump has also described the shame of becoming a criminal defendant four times over. Even as his advisers used the indictments to great effect in fundraising and galvanizing his Republican base, Trump has conceded that the charges pained him.
“Nobody wants to be indicted,” Trump told reporters aboard his airplane in June. “I don’t care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I don’t want to be indicted. I’ve never been indicted. I went through my whole life, now I get indicted every two months.”
It was a massive shock for a man who, until then, had navigated a wary path around law enforcement scrutiny throughout his long public life.
He was investigated criminally over a land acquisition in the mid-1970s, yet escaped unscathed. A federal special counsel examined possible ties between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia, as well as his effort to obstruct the investigation as president, and recommended no charges. He was twice impeached by a Democrat-led House, but twice the Senate did not convict him.
“He’s been so lucky, and nobody’s ever had worse adversaries than this guy,” said Ty Cobb, a lawyer who worked in the Trump White House during the special counsel investigation and has become sharply critical of the former president.
Some of it was luck, but his public relations strategy paid off as well. Trump deployed a mix of bare-knuckle tactics — attacking prosecutors as “corrupt” and guilty of the same conduct of which he was suspected — and arm-twisting charm.
Among Trump’s prized relationships was with Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney for decades.
While Morgenthau was in office, he would joke privately that his pet charity, the Police Athletic League, was the only one to which Trump routinely donated. And when Trump supported Morgenthau politically, some Trump Organization officials were told they needed to write checks of their own to the district attorney’s campaign, according to two people familiar with what took place. (People who worked with Morgenthau, who died in 2019, said there was nothing directly involving Trump that crossed their desks that would have required investigation.)
The district attorney’s office, now held by Alvin Bragg, was the first to indict Trump last year before other prosecutors followed suit. The former president privately reacted with disbelief that his hometown district attorney had dared to come after him.
In 2021, when the office was intensifying its investigation, Trump told an interviewer that “Bob Morgenthau would not have stood for this.”
Bragg’s case concerns a personally embarrassing episode for Trump: a $130,000 hush-money payment to a porn actor, Stormy Daniels, meant to bury her story of a sexual encounter with Trump. His fixer at the time, Michael Cohen, made the payment. Trump, who has denied the affair, is accused of falsifying business records about his reimbursement of Cohen.
Trump’s lawyers, as they do in each of his legal entanglements, are seeking to delay the trial past Election Day. If Trump is reelected, the cases against him would probably grind to a halt.
The New York judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchan, recently delayed the trial three weeks, until April 15, and the hearing Monday will determine whether he postpones it further.
Despite the best efforts of Trump’s lawyers to delay or scuttle the case, it’s the indictment about which his advisers are the least concerned. They argue it is the least politically damaging to the presumptive Republican nominee, despite the personally mortifying details.
However, the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case, which accuses Trump of wildly exaggerating his net worth, has struck a particularly sensitive nerve with the former president.
Trump measures his wealth in the billions, a sum that largely stems from the value of his properties. Although valuing real estate is more of an art than a science, the attorney general disputed some of his purported estimates as wildly exaggerated, concluding that he inflated his net worth by as much as $2 billion.
And then there’s his cash. Trump argues that he is relatively liquid for a real estate developer, stating in a deposition last year that he had more than $400 million in cash.
Although The New York Times was unable to verify the precise number, records and interviews show that he recently had more than $350 million in cash as well as stocks and other investments he can sell in a hurry. While significant, it’s not enough to secure the appeal bond.
Typically, when facing outsize financial troubles, Trump has refused to concede that anything is wrong, dating back to when his business nearly collapsed in the early 1990s. People who have known him for many years say he has become accustomed to believing he can give the appearance of waiting out problems until circumstances change, banking on some sort of rescue at the last minute.
In the 1990s, banks bailed him out even though he had massively overextended himself with a costly development of the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
With James poised to begin enforcing the $454 million fraud judgment, Trump appeared to be hoping for similar twists of fate. He could, for example, try to secure a loan from a private equity firm or a hedge fund. He is also hoping an appeals court will pause the judgment.
And then there’s the windfall he could reap from his social media company, whose shares start trading on the stock market as early as Monday. His stake is currently valued at roughly $3 billion, but it might come too late: He is prohibited from selling for six months. Although Trump could find ways around that restriction that enable him to use his stake to raise cash for the appeal bond, no such deal appears imminent.
A post on his Truth Social platform Friday captured Trump’s insecurities. He claimed (falsely) that he had almost $500 million in cash and also claimed (falsely) that he had been planning to use that money to fund his own campaign; in reality, he last spent money on his own candidacy in 2016, and the amount was still nowhere near what he had claimed he would spend.
But his post was honest about at least one thing: To him, the $454 million judgment was a “shocking number.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
