Former President Donald Trump is known to try whatever he can to weasel out of paying legal fees. So much so, according to a new book by The New York Times’s David Enrich, that he even tried to pay a lawyer with a horse. He owed the aforementioned attorney $2 million and offered him a deed to the stallion, valued at $5 million at the time, reports The Guardian, which obtained a copy of the book.

Referring to this rather…weird episode, Enrich writes in his book Servants of The Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and The Corruption of Justice, that “once he regained the capacity for speech,” the lawyer in question “stammered … ‘This isn’t the 1800s. You can’t pay me with a horse.” The book is scheduled for publication next week.

The Guardian reports:

“Accounts of Trump refusing to pay legal and other bills are legion. In New York, his business and tax affairs are the subject of civil and criminal investigations.”

Trump’s recalcitrance in paying legal bills also played a part in his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which as every American who isn’t dead knows, that landed him in even more legal mierda. 

And Trump doesn’t mind swindling his friends either. Another forthcoming book, Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor by Andrew Kirtzman tells us about the time in January 2021 when Rudy Giuliani’s girlfriend tried to obtain $2.5 million from Trump, for the legal work Giuliani did in an attempt to prevent Joe Biden from becoming President and for “defending you during the Russia hoax investigation and then the impeachment.”

Maria Ryan, Giuliani’s girlfriend made this request in the same letter where she asked if Giuliani could receive a “general pardon” and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Kirtzman writes. Well, I guess if Trump could give that medal to Rush Limbaugh, then anyone is fair game.

But her efforts were for naught. According to The New York Times, Trump told advisers that Giuliani “would only get paid ‘on the come,’ a reference to a bet in the casino game craps that is essentially payment on a successful roll of the dice.”

This is typical Trump, though isn’t it? Not only did he swindle Giuliani, he also swindled the country and is still trying to do so.