Former President Trump once tried to pay a lawyer with a horse, New York Times reporter David Enrich revealed in his new book, according to The Guardian.
Trump offered the lawyer, whom he owed $2 million, the deed to a stallion, Enrich reported in “Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice,” out next week.
The unidentified lawyer, from a law firm that worked for Trump in the 1990s, visited the former president at Trump Tower after he refused to pay, according to The Guardian.
“Trump made some apologetic noises. Then he said: ‘I’m not going to pay your bill. I’m going to give you something more valuable,’” Enrich wrote, per The Guardian. The former president then “rummaged around in a filing cabinet” and pulled out a deed to a horse supposedly worth $5 million.
“Once he regained the capacity for speech,” the lawyer reportedly said, “This isn’t the 1800s. You can’t pay me with a horse,” Enrich wrote, according to The Guardian.
After the lawyer threatened to sue, Trump eventually paid “at least a portion of what he owed,” Enrich wrote, according to The Guardian.
Trump has racked up extensive legal fees in the last few years in the face of personal litigation and government investigations, according to ABC News.
The Republican National Committee (RNC), which has paid nearly $2 million to law firms representing the former president since October 2021, recently threatened to stop paying Trump’s legal fees if he announces another run for president, an RNC spokesperson recently told the network.