Trump pleads with supporters for cash to help pay soaring legal bills

Donald Trump on Thursday again asked loyal supporters for cash to help him meet mounting legal expenses and keep the “filthy hands” of the New York attorney general off Trump Tower and other properties.

The appeal came as Trump faced an imminent deadline to pay a huge bond from a New York fraud trial that ended in a $454m civil judgment against him for overstating his net worth and the value of his real estate properties. If he is unable to post it, authorities could start to seize the former US president’s assets.

Under the headline “Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower!” a Trump fundraising email sent to supporters read: “Insane radical Democrat AG Letitia James wants to SEIZE my properties in New York. This includes the iconic Trump Tower.”

The twice-impeached Trump – currently the presumptive Republican presidential nominee – continued: “Democrats think that this will intimidate me. They think that if they take my cash to stifle my campaign, that I’ll GIVE UP!

“But worst of all? They think that YOU will abandon me, and that you will GIVE UP on our country. Here’s one thing they don’t know: WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER!”

Trump did surrender last August, to state authorities in Georgia in a case now concerning 10 election subversion charges. Facing 78 other criminal charges (for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments), he has used his Georgia mugshot in fundraising appeals.

In New York, Trump faces 34 criminal charges in the hush-money case and recently paid a $92m bond to cover his appeal in a civil case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.

But his chief concern in the state at present is meeting obligations while appealing a multimillion-dollar civil