Donald Trump Contradicting His Lawyers Leaves 3 Possibilities—Attorney

Former President Donald Trump's recent contradiction of his own legal team about the cash he has available could be explained by one of three possibilities, according to legal analyst Glenn Kirschner on Saturday.

Trump was hit with a massive penalty after being found liable in a civil fraud trial brought against him and The Trump Organization by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which accused him of a long-term scheme to inflate his net worth and the worth of his assets in order to secure more favorable business loans. With interest, the penalty is now over $450 million, and James has begun the process to allow the seizure of Trump's real estate assets if he's unable to pay or post an appeal bond before Monday.

In order to begin an appeal against the ruling, Trump would be required to post a bond of slightly more than the amount of the penalty against him. In a court filing from last week, Trump's legal team admitted that he has been unable to secure the bond amount after asking dozens of surety entities, which all turned him down due to the size of the bond. The filing called the possibility of posting the amount in time a "practical impossibility."

However, in a post to Truth Social on Friday morning, Trump claimed to have $500 million in cash available to him, contradicting the statements from his lawyers.

"Through hard work, talent, and luck, I currently have almost five hundred million dollars in cash, a substantial amount of which I intended to use in my campaign for president," Trump wrote in the post. "The often overturned political hack judge on the rigged and corrupt A.G. case, where I have done nothing wrong, knew this, wanted to take it away from me, and that's where and why he came up with the shocking number which, coupled with his crazy interest demand, is approximately $454,000,000."

Touching on the matter in a YouTube video from Saturday, Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney and frequent critic of the former president, suggested that there are three possibilities for what is happening.

"One: Donald Trump's lawyers lied to Judge [Arthur] Engoron in that court filing just a few days ago," he said. "Now, I don't know that there's anything who would say that Donald Trump's lawyers set the standard for accuracy and candor, but I think it unlikely, perhaps even highly unlikely, that they lied about Donald Trump's cash-on-hand, his liquid assets, in a formal court filing just a matter of a few days ago."

For the second possibility, Kirschner suggested that "Donald Trump is lying," and in lieu of a deeper explanation, he offered only a pointed, silent look at the camera, as if inviting viewers to consider for themselves the considerable likelihood of that.

For the third possibility, he suggested that both the lawyers and Trump were telling the truth, and that this could be possible if some person or entity had given the former president $500 million within the days between the court filing and the Truth Social post. The risk that some outside parties might attempt to curry favor with Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP nomination for president, by helping pay his legal bills has been floated by numerous observers in recent weeks.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office via email on Sunday morning for comment.