In Fund-Raising Blitz, Trump Warns Democrats: Hands Off Trump Tower

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. With a deadline on Monday to secure a $454 million bond in his civil fraud case, Donald Trump’s campaign emails have claimed Democrats are trying to seize his marquee property. […]

In Fund-Raising Blitz, Trump Warns Democrats: Hands Off Trump Tower

In Fund-Raising Blitz, Trump Warns Democrats: Hands Off Trump Tower thumbnail

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

With a deadline on Monday to secure a $454 million bond in his civil fraud case, Donald Trump’s campaign emails have claimed Democrats are trying to seize his marquee property.

A doorman stands in front of Trump Tower.
Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, holds a central place in former President Donald J. Trump’s celebrity and political rise.Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Michael Gold

Former President Donald J. Trump, with a deadline fast approaching to secure a roughly half-billion-dollar bond in his civil fraud case in New York or risk seizure of his assets and flagship properties, sent an email on Saturday morning to his campaign’s supporters.

The subject line — “Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower” — was repeated at the start of the email in bold, italics and all caps, even as the message was clearly intended not for his backers but for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who brought the case.

Mr. Trump told his supporters that Ms. James “wants to SEIZE my properties in New York,” adding, “THIS INCLUDES THE ICONIC TRUMP TOWER!” He then exhorted them to donate money to his presidential campaign as a show of strength against the web of legal troubles he faces, which he has broadly cast as a political witch hunt.

With the deadline for Mr. Trump to post an appeals bond on Monday, the Trump campaign has sent at least 10 similar fund-raising solicitations since Wednesday accusing Ms. James and Democrats of trying to seize Mr. Trump’s marquee property, Trump Tower.

Last month, a New York judge imposed a $454 million penalty on Mr. Trump in the civil fraud case after concluding that the former president had fraudulently inflated the value of his company’s properties and his net worth to obtain favorable loans and other benefits from banks.

Mr. Trump has appealed the judgment, and was given until Monday to either write a check to the state court system for the full amount or obtain an appeal bond. But his lawyers said last week that he had been unable to secure the bond, raising the prospect that Ms. James could move to collect the money and try to seize some of the properties involved in the case.


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