Trump biographer says ex-president is about to be ‘exposed’ by $454M fine and claims it will ‘open the kimono’ and reveal Donald to be poorer than he lets on

Donald Trump’s biographer claims the former president’s finances will soon be exposed as a sham, thanks to a $454 million fine he owes the state of New York

Tim O’Brien told MSNBC: ‘Now here we are in 2024 and he’s about to be exposed.

“It’s going to be a slow grind. I don’t think there will be much drama on Monday. But the process of opening the kimono and discovering that Donald Trump does not indeed have financial clothing, at least not the kind of financial clothing he claims to have had, begins.”

O’Brien has suggested that Trump – whose net worth is estimated at $2.6 billion – has access to far less liquid cash than he claims. New York Attorney General Letitia James is reportedly seeking to seize one of the former president’s golf clubs and an estate as collateral.

Trump was fined $464 million for inflating the value of his assets to get more favorable loan terms. He will appeal the ruling, but must post the $557 million bail on Monday, with his assets likely to be seized if he cannot.

In February, as the highly contentious legal battle drew to a close, New York Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump and some of his business associates had unlawfully inflated the value of his assets to get more favorable terms from lenders and insurers.

Judge Engoron, who previously imposed a gag order on Trump after he posted a derogatory comment about the judge’s clerk on social media, ordered the former president to cough up about $355 million in fraud fines, plus interest.

Including interest, the amount Trump owes is more than $464 million. Trump has maintained his innocence and plans to appeal the ruling.

The former president has until Monday to post his nine-figure bail, an eye-watering amount that Trump is struggling to come up with. Chubb, the insurance company that underwrote Trump’s $91.6 million bond in the E. Jean Carroll case, told the Republican frontrunner’s legal team that was not an option.

If Trump does not pay the full amount or secure bail by Monday, New York AG Letitia James could seize his property.

On Friday, the New York attorney general’s office ruled in Westchester County, where Trump’s New York golf course and private estate are located.

Entering a judgment is the first step a creditor would take to attempt to reclaim a property. AG James’ decision to enter a judgment in Westchester is a sure sign that the state is preparing to seize the former president’s property.

Judgments have also been handed down in New York City, where Trump’s other assets, including his prized possession, Trump Tower, are located.

Trump has this weekend to find a way to extricate himself from this situation. His lawyers have said the former president has faced “insurmountable difficulties” in his efforts to obtain bail.

Together with Lawrence O’Donnell MSNBC program, Trump’s former biographer said the true state of Donald Trump’s financial affairs was about to be revealed.

Trump has tried to refute claims that he does not have enough money to pay bail. Despite his lawyers saying in a court filing on Monday that he had failed to secure a bond, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday that he had nearly $500 million in cash.

His post, which was written in all caps, read: “Thanks to hard work, talent and luck, I currently have almost $500 million in cash, a substantial amount of which I planned to use in my campaign for president.”

O’Brien, who is currently a senior executive editor at Bloomberg Opinion and previously a reporter for the New York Times, wrote TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, a biography co-authored with Trump and published in 2005.

In his television appearance on Friday, O’Brien recounted a conversation he had with Trump in which the former president discussed his past and expressed regret about the bankruptcy.

“He said, ‘You know, my father always said, ‘You never personally guarantee any loans.’ And I made a mistake. I personally under-guaranteed too much money in the early 1990s,” O’Brien recalled. ”I didn’t think it would catch up with me. And that happened. And I learned my lesson. I would never personally guarantee a loan again after that.”

The biographer would later learn that Trump lied when he said that.

‘I didn’t know it, but it turned out that he personally guaranteed part of the loans for the new building he was developing in Chicago. So he goes through these searing moments where he loses almost everything he can and has, and he says, “I’ve learned these lessons; I should have listened to my dad.” Look, he’s doing the same thing.’

O’Brien said the civil fraud case was evidence that Trump is “not learning his lessons.”

‘He doesn’t anticipate problems well. He doesn’t do it because he’s a juvenile delinquent; he lacks the maturity, wisdom and strategic insight of an adult,” he said.

When O’Brien published his biography of the former president, Trump filed a $5 billion lawsuit against the reporter, seeking $2.5 billion in compensatory damages and $2.5 billion in punitive damages.

Trump’s lawsuit revolved around a claim O’Brien made in his book, alleging that Trump was not a billionaire but instead had a net worth ranging from $150 to $250 million.

Trump’s combative lawsuit, which had all the hallmarks of Roy Cohn’s legal playbook, was dismissed by a judge in 2009, a decision that was upheld by an appeals court in 2011.

Trump is trying to portray an image of untouchable wealth, and O’Brien believed that the former president’s extravagant response to the biography’s claims about his net worth stemmed from his desire to maintain that image.

In an interview with Washington After in 2016, O’Brien noted that only a few pages in the biography explored Trump’s net worth.

He said Trump’s frustration with the claim was “a measure of his deep insecurity.”

“His wealth and the extent of his wealth … are integral to how he wants people to perceive him,” O’Brien said.

If Trump doesn’t come up with $454 million on Monday, that picture will take a major hit.