GoFundMe launched for Donald Trump’s ‘unjust’ $US500m fine

Thousands of Donald Trump’s loyal fans have stepped in to help the former president pay fines well over $US500m after his loss in fraud and defamation cases in New York.

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump launches a new line of signature shoes at Sneaker Con on February 17 in Philadelphia. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump supporters are tipping tens of thousands of dollars into a GoFundMe page to help pay over $US500m in penalties the former president owes after stinging losses in fraud and defamation cases in Manhattan, as Nikki Haley warned Republicans against becoming Mr Trump’s “piggy bank”.

The page, called Stand With Trump – Fund the $355 million Unjust Judgement, had reached $US100,000 from around 2500 donors as of Saturday (Sunday AEDT), as analysts pondered how Mr Trump could meet the crushing imposts that could exceed the billionaire’s cash holdings.

Set up by Elena Cardone from Florida, who described herself as “wife of Grant Cardone, mother and an ardent supporter of American values and an advocate for justice”, the page emerged a day after Mr Trump was fined US$355 million by a New York court for exaggerating the value and size of his properties.

“I stand unwaveringly with President Donald Trump in the face of what I see as unprecedented and unfair treatment by certain judicial elements in New York,” Ms Cardone wrote on the page, reflecting the typical reaction from the former president’s supporters.

Nikki Haley, the former president’s last competitor for the Republican nomination for president, said she did not want the Republican National Committee “to become his piggy bank for his personal court cases” in an interview with CNN on Friday (Saturday AEDT).

“We’ve already seen him spend $50 million worth of campaign contributions toward his personal court cases,” she said, referring to an investigation by the New York Times in January that found the former president had spent that amount on “legal bills and investigation related expenses”.

Her comments came after the former president last week nominated his daughter in law, Lara Trump, to be RNC co-chairman following the announcement the current chairman, Ronna McDaniel would step down after a rocky relationship wit the former president.

“If I am elected to this position , I can assure you - every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC - that is electing Donald J Trump,” Ms Trump, wife of Eric Trump, told Newsmax last week, fuelling speculation she would seek to direct RNC funds to help defray Mr Trumps legal costs.

Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination last month, shared similar views on social media on Saturday, declaring “no-one should be leader of RNC unless they pledge not to use its limited resources to pay legal fees and judgments of Donald Trump”.

The former president’s latest penalty for fraud came a few weeks after a separate Manhattan court fined him $83.3 million for defamation after he denied allegations by E Jean Carroll that he had sexually assaulted her in a department store in 1995 or 1996.

The headline fraud penalty in the case brought down on Friday (Saturday AEDT) excluded around $98 million in “prejudgement interest” that the court also ordered Mr Trump to pay, pushing the total penalties in the two cases to well over $US500 million.

In September last year Forbes magazine estimated Mr Trump’s net worth at US$2.6 billion, most of it tied up in illiquid real estate including golf courses in Scotland and his lavish private club Mar A Lago in Florida, including US$426 million in cash and liquid assets,

“We have, I believe, 400 plus and going up very substantially every month,” Mr Trump said in a deposition for New York’s attorney general, who brought the fraud case against Trump, adding “my biggest expense is probably legal fees, unfortunately.”

Michael Cohen, a former lawyer of the former president turned enemy, predicted Mr Trump would have to sell assets cover the fines.

“I don’t care what anybody wants to write in any newspaper, regardless of what their credentials may be, unless he’s gonna show you that his bank account has more than a half a million — he doesn’t have 400 million of cash on hand,” he told MSNBC in an interview on Saturday.

Donald Trump, who was campaigning in Pennsylvania on Saturday, will return to court in New York on 25th March over hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 that were allegedly campaign finance contributions.