New reporting tonight on what's going on inside of Donald Trump's world as a deadline to put up half a billion dollars is fast approaching. Panic mode, I'm told, is setting in. Trump now has less than a week to secure that bond, and he had been counting on the insurance company that helped put up the 91 million dollars to cover the Eugene Carroll judgment, that bond, to come in. But the insurance giant there informed his attorneys in the last several days that that option was not going to be on the table. His team has been weighing There are options here, like seeking out wealthy supporters or weighing which of his assets could be sold and fast. I'm told that Trump himself has become increasingly concerned about the optics that that March 25th deadline could bring, given he is someone who has long tied his identity to his wealth, and he could find himself confronting a real financial crisis in just a matter of days. Trump posted eight times within 2 hours this morning on Truth Social, arguing that he shouldn't have to put up that money and saying, quote, that he would be forced to mortgage or sell great assets, perhaps at fire sale prices, and if and when I win the appeal, they would be gone.

Trump has continued to privately lash out at the attorney general here in New York, LaTisha James, who brought this case and the judge, Arthur and Goran. Here tonight is CNN Senior Legal Analyst and former federal prosecutor, Ellie Honig. Ellie, I should note that Trump's team, when we asked about the concern that he has over making this half a billion dollar bond, called it pure BS, and noted that he has filed this motion to unstay what they're calling an unjust and unconstitutional judgment. What they're asking for is either, Don't make us pay this while we're appealing, or, Let this bond be a lot smaller than this, nearly half a billion dollars. What do you make of this new reporting, though.

So they should be panicked. I mean, this is real. It may not have set in yet for Donald Trump, but this deadline of Monday is real. This judgment is $400 plus million. And what's going to happen on Monday if Trump cannot post a bond is LaTisha has made very clear she will start the process of seizing his assets, of freezing, putting liens on his bank accounts, his real estate holdings, and that's going to be devastating for him. And there's no shortcut here. That's what's going to happen if he doesn't come up with a bond.

So our reporting, and what I was hearing from people is that he was basically counting on Chubb, which put up the bond for the Eugene Carroll case to help here. But the problem is that he doesn't have as much to leverage when it comes to a second bond that is, one, much bigger, and two, obviously the second one that he's now doing in just a matter of weeks. Realistically, what options does his legal team have here?

Yeah, $90 million is one-fifth of $400 million or so, so he's in a tough spot. There are two things that can bail Trump out of this. One is, remember, he has moved to the Court of Appeals in New York, the Appellate Division, asking them to reduce the amount of the bond. That happens sometimes. It's hard to say how often because there's no overarching data on it, but there are examples of the appeals court coming in and reducing a bond by 90%. Perhaps he'll get bailed out by the court. The other option is he comes up with the money, whether he has some angel investor or some generous donor, or perhaps some company like Chubb that's willing to take a risk. But the status quo now is he has scoured the Earth and been unable to come up with that.

How likely is he to get this appeals court to come to his saving here?

It's hard to say because the judgment amount here is mammoth. There are examples. There's an example where one court of took a 38 million dollar judgment and knocked it down to $10,000. That's a huge reduction. So he's got a shot. I think if he's just waiting and hoping on that, he could be setting himself up for real disappointment. I think the better course of action is to get the money together if I was advising him. So I would say he's got a shot, but I wouldn't bank on it.

When it comes to this, though, if he's not banking on that, he's got days left here.

Yeah, it's what is it, Tuesday? Yeah. He's got six days. I mean, LaTisha James is going to be ready to roll out and start seizing these properties. That's real. She's made clear she is giving him no leeway whatsoever.

Yeah. Of course, we know the Eugene Carroll case. That was the 11th hour when he came in with that agreement there from the insurance giant. We'll see if it happens there. But the other thing that's going on is he's facing other legal expenses still as well. He's got these criminal cases that are approaching. His legal team today just filed their other brief in the immunity argument to the Supreme Court. In it, they're basically suggesting this off-ramp of if the court doesn't agree, sending it back down to a lower court, which would essentially help with their strategy of delaying all of this.

That would be Donald Trump's team's dream come true to get it sent back down. I want to make Claire just read through this brief recently. It just came in a couple of hours ago, very recently. As in tonight? Yes, as in a few hours ago. The term absolute immunity gets a bad rap. It's a little misleading. Donald Trump is not arguing, I'm automatically covered by everything that happened from the moment I took the oath till the moment I left. What he's arguing is that I'm covered for my official acts within the scope of the presidency, and that's what could lead to the outcome that you discussed just now. If the Supreme Court says, Okay, you can be covered for something within the presidency, now the district court, the trial court, you have to do fact finding as to whether the charges here relate to something inside the presidency or outside the presidency, that would be a win for Donald Trump.

I read through this also, and the brief includes... It's not surprising what their argument is because we've been hearing this official But they also include statements like this saying that he communicated with the vice president, the vice president's official staff, members of Congress, to urge them to exercise their official duties in the election certification process in accordance with the position based on voluminous information available to President Trump in his official capacity that the election was tainted by extensive fraud and irregularities.

It's not true. That's some spin, right?

How does the Supreme Court read something like that?

That's the problem. The argument that If he was within his scope, he's covered. That's potentially legitimate. But the twisting of logic and reality that Trump has to do to get there, to get what he did within the scope of the presidency is facially ridiculous, right? He says, Well, I was just calling the vice president and asking him to do his job. I was just calling the Georgia Secretary of State and asking him to do his job. No, he wasn't. I mean, we've seen the calls. We've heard the testimony. He's asking them to violate their oaths of office. That's where I think he's going to run into trouble. And there's one more thing that I noted about the brief. Donald Trump's lawyers make the mistake of saddling a decent argument about whether he's in the scope or not with a ridiculous argument, which is this impeachment argument that he can only be indicted if he's been impeached and then convicted by the Senate. I don't know why they include that. They don't need that. To me, that sinks the argument. If I'm advising Trump's legal team, which I'm not, but if I'm advising any normal person, I would say, Leave out the lousy argument.

Just bank on the good one here.

That is included in here, though. We'll see the Supreme Court response to it. It's going to be very interesting. Thanks for responding to that new reporting in that brief.