“Can’t escape this”: Legal analyst says fraud ruling may force Trump into “personal bankruptcy”

Former President Donald Trump may file for personal bankruptcy after a judge ordered him to pay more than $400 million in penalties for fraud, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin predicted on Thursday.

“It could also prompt him to file for personal bankruptcy because, again, in this order Donald Trump and the business entities that were found liable, are jointly and severally liable,” Rubin said. “That means that any one of them can be liable for the whole of the judgment attributed to them and that also means that Donald Trump can’t escape this just by plunging those business entities themselves into bankruptcy, because that would leave him individually on the hook for the totality of it.”

Rubin said the “only way to escape it all together would be to file for personal bankruptcy, which would place an automatic stay on further litigation, including judgment execution.”

Trump is barred from borrowing money from any financial institutions registered or chartered in New York but that still leaves “lots of financial institutions the probably fall outside of that” and “wealthy individuals” and “even foreign countries” who may help bail out Trump, Rubin said.

“I asked the Attorney General’s office early this week, ‘Would we know, as the public, who loans following Trump this money to him? Would you even know, as the Attorney General’s office?’” she added. “And I believe the answer was, ‘We are not clear on that.'”