A while, I’m sure. The thing is, to appeal a ruling you have to be able to show that some part of the process wasn’t within the letter of the law. Trying to appeal will certainly buy some time, but not much if the attempt is unsuccessful. Given the wealth of evidence against the organization, I wouldn’t think the appeal will be successful.
This will ultimately be what does him in. He can play legal games for years with ease, but the moment he’s forced to pony up actual hard cash his house of cards will collapse. Best case scenario for him right now is that he can dip into the GOP’s finances to pay this fine, although if he does so that’s opening up yet another can of worms that’s likely to come back and bite him. No bank is going to loan him money, and his supporters collectively don’t have enough cash to cover that fee even if he could convince them to send him even more money.
Any more judgements like this one and he’s going to have to start seriously liquidating assets and with how leveraged most of them probably are even that’s going to net him a lot less actual cash than it might seem like. There’s a reason he grifts so hard and it’s not because he’s so amazingly successful.
I think he probably has more cash than you think. Selling one or more of his properties to flip the bill will be embarrassing, but there is no doubt he has the financial means to weather this storm.
What’s to stop him from just declaring bankruptcy to avoid all of this, aside from him losing face?
