Trump now owes more than $500m. How will he pay?

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Donald Trump has a lot of major financial decisions to make following Judge Arthur Engoron’s Friday order that he owes more than $350m in penalties in his New York state business fraud case – and the clock is ticking for him to make them.

He essentially has two options: pay now, or potentially pay a lot more later.

The court gave the former US president 30 days from the verdict, or 17 March, to figure out what to do. But the $350m verdict is only the beginning: Engoron’s decision also ordered Trump to pay additional pre-judgment interest going back as far as when New York attorney general Letitia James began her investigation in March 2019.

The attorney general’s office has calculated the interest due so far brings the current total he owes to more than $450m; the statutory 9% annual interest rate will keep accruing at more than $600,000 per week unless Trump puts up the entire amount.

Since Trump plans to appeal the verdict, the only ways to pause the interest collection are either to park the full amount in a New York state-controlled escrow account or find a company prepared to help him post a bond that will assure the state he can pay the penalties if his appeals fail – for a hefty fee, of course.

It’s unclear if Trump has the cash to post the full amount. Trump said under oath last year that he had roughly $400m in liquid assets, not quite enough to cover what he’d need to put into escrow.

As the Guardian US’s Hugo Lowell reported on Monday: “Trump’s preference is to avoid using his own money while he appeals.” But to obtain a bond, Trump would have to find a company willing to do