Will Letitia James seize Trump Tower? Ex-president is running out of time to pay $464m bond

Lawyers for Donald Trump notified an appeals court this week that their client has failed to secure a bond to satisfy the $464m civil fraud judgment levelled against him by a New York court, saying finding a company to back such a large amount of money was proving a “practical impossibility”.

Mr Trump has hotly objected to a “fire sale” of his property empire – selling off assets to generate cash to meet the bond – but failing to do so risks allowing such prized properties as Trump Tower in Manhattan, so integral to his brand, to fall into the hands of New York attorney general Letitia James, who has already said she is more than happy to repossess his holdings.

The former president and current presumptive Republican presidential nominee has approached “about 30 surety companies through four separate brokers”, his attorneys said, but had so far come back empty-handed in the face of “insurmountable difficulties”.

“Critical among these challenges is not just the inability and reluctance of the vast majority of sureties to underwrite a bond for this unprecedented sum, but, even more significantly, the unwillingness of every surety bond provider approached by defendants to accept real estate as collateral,” his attorneys wrote.

The companies approached “will only accept cash or cash equivalents” such as marketable securities, they said, and would typically “require collateral of approximately 120 per cent of the amount of the judgment,” which, in this case, comes to almost $560m.

Sureties would then in all probability charge bond premiums of approximately 2 per cent per year “with two years in advance – an upfront cost over $18m,” according to the attorneys.

That money would not be recoverable even if Mr Trump were to