Former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin said Wednesday he is concerned former President Trump could try to seek out foreign sources to pay the massive legal fees that are putting a strain on his finances.
In a discussion on CNN, Toobin said he expects Trump to have difficulty finding any banks that would loan him money, citing his strained history with Deutsche Bank.
Prosecutors in Trump’s recent civil fraud case in New York argued that the bank lost out on almost $170 million in interest because of the former president’s false valuations of assets. Trump’s team has argued, however, that the money was all repaid.
“I think the most interesting question about that is, what if he goes to foreign sources? What if he goes to Azerbaijan? He has a lot of business overseas. What if he goes to Russia?” Toobin said. “What if he goes and gets hundreds of millions of dollars from overseas?”
“What does that mean if a candidate for president is is on the hook for multiple, multiple millions of dollars to a foreign source? Because that, it seems to me, is the most likely source,” he continued. “Banks, at this point, don’t want anything to do with him. Deutsche Bank has lived a nightmare for decades now because they’ve been associated with Trump.”
Toobin added, “So I think foreign is his only option. And that raises a very big can of worms.”
Billionaire Elon Musk reportedly met with Trump and a few wealthy Republican donors Sunday in Florida as the former president tried to secure his finances ahead of a likely 2024 rematch against President Biden. Reports of the meeting surfaced Tuesday, and Musk said Wednesday that he would not donate to either candidate.
“Just to be super clear, I am not donating money to either candidate for US President,” Musk wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Trump was ordered to pay columnist E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her in 2019 after she publicized accusations that the former president sexually assaulted her. Trump, who denies the accusation, asked the judge to rescind the verdict.
A separate jury had already found Trump liable for sexual battery in the case, and he was ordered to pay $5 million for defamation.
Trump previously asked the judge to delay enforcement of the judgment — or at least permit a reduced bond amount — in anticipation of his post-trial motions, insisting they will get the amount entirely tossed or heavily reduced.
His delay request also follows a penalty of more than $454 million, with interest, against him in his New York civil fraud case. The judge in that case determined Trump and top executives at the Trump Organization were liable for fraud and conspired to alter the former president’s net worth for tax and insurance benefits.
Each day the judgement goes unpaid, it increases more than $111,000 in interest.
Trump’s net worth is estimated by Forbes and Bloomberg to be between $2.6 billion and $3.1 billion, but it’s unclear how much cash the former president has on hand to pay the legal fees.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung took a swing at Toobin in a statement to The Hill.
“Is this the same Jeffrey Toobin that was caught masturbating in front of his co-workers on a video call?” he wrote, referencing a Zoom incident in 2020 when the former legal analyst was accused of exposing himself to his colleagues at The New Yorker magazine.
Toobin, who was fired from the magazine due to the incident, apologized at the time, saying he didn’t realize his camera was on.