'Clean' property, private lenders could be Trump's best option to get $540 million for legal judgments

• Donald Trump is on a deadline to put up more than $454 million in cash or bonds to stay execution of his New York civil fraud penalty pending appeal.
• Trump has also asked to delay another fast-approaching deadline to pay an $83.3 million penalty in E. Jean Carroll's civil defamation case.
• Trump's lawyers warned he may have to sell off parts of his real estate portfolio under "exigent circumstances."
• But legal experts said Trump may be able to use his properties as collateral to borrow what he needs from private lenders.

Donald Trump is racing to stave off a pair of civil penalties totaling nearly $540 million — without having to first put up the full amounts in cash or bonds.

The former president's lawyers claim that he would face "irreparable" harm if required to fully secure his judgments in order to keep them from coming due, and might even have to quickly sell off properties that can't be re-bought.

They also say Trump can't simply post a cash deposit — at least not in his New York civil business fraud case, where he is facing $454 million in fines and interest alone.

"No one, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, has five hundred million laying around," Trump's attorney Chris Kise told an appeals court judge last week.

But legal experts say there's another option that Trump's lawyers haven't mentioned in the court filings: Trump could offer up some of his properties as collateral to borrow what he needs — potentially from private equity sources.

There are "lots of private lenders out there in the debt markets and private equity markets that could lend" to Trump, said Columbia University law professor Eric Talley.

"In all cases, the loans would probably have to be secured with Trump properties, but if