Donald Trump is finally having to face some consequences for his past misdeeds. He has already had to put up two bonds to cover the judgments in the two defamation cases E. Jean Carroll won against him (to the tune of almost $100 million, combined, with interest), and he is now on the hook for the enormous judgment against him in the civil fraud trial he also lost. His lawyers are complaining that he doesn't have the money to pay the penalty (almost a half-billion dollars, with interest) and that he has been unsuccessful in obtaining a bond to cover the amount. If Trump doesn't post a bond or put up the money by early next week, the state of New York could start seizing his properties and liquidating them.

Trump, of course, thinks all of this is monstrously unfair. He is bitterly complaining about it to all his followers on his pet social media platform. And in the end he may well get some of these penalties against him lowered in the appellate courts (which is a fairly common thing, especially for extremely large jury awards). But until then he's still got to put the full amount up -- just like anyone else would have to do if they were in the same position.

For once, Trump's consummate skill in delaying legal proceedings may be no help to him. He can delay the final settlements through all the appeals he cares to file, but sooner or later he will run out of appeals and money will actually change hands (instead of just being held in bond). Barring an appellate court completely tossing out a judgment against Trump (which is highly unlikely to happen), Trump is eventually going to have to pay for his misdeeds. And even winning back the presidency isn't going to help him avoid this fate.

Nobody knows what will happen next Monday. Will Trump get bailed out by some wealthy donor? If he does, will we even know who it is? Those are profoundly unsettling questions, since "some wealthy donor" may wind up being some foreign entity or even a foreign country. What will happen if Vladimir Putin or some oil emirate posts a bond for Trump? More to the point, what would happen if Trump is then re-elected to the presidency? Half a billion dollars ain't peanuts, but it would be money well spent for a foreign nation to have that kind of leverage over a U.S. president.

If Trump cannot post the bond, how quickly will the attorney general move to seize Trump's assets? And which ones will she start with? How many buildings and golf courses does it take to add up to half a billion dollars? We may all soon find out.

This all cuts to the heart of Trump's brand, which is why it angers him so much. Trump is a self-professed billionaire (he's claimed he's worth up to $10 billion) and self-professed real estate genius. Last year, in a deposition, Trump actually bragged that he had over $400 million in liquid assets ("I have over 400 -- fairly substantially over $400 million in cash. That's just cash. That's just cash."). Either Trump was lying about that -- under oath -- or he spent a whole bunch of it between then and now. The massive judgment against him is because he routinely lies about how much everything he owns is worth. Now we may get an honest reckoning of it all, if his properties are seized and put on the auction block.

It is hard not to revel in the schadenfreude. Donald Trump has abused the legal system for his entire life, by suing people willy-nilly even when he doesn't have a prayer of winning the case (just today it was announced that Trump has filed a new lawsuit against ABC and George Stephanopoulos, for supposedly defaming Trump). Trump buries his opponents in legal fees when he wants to punish them, to put this another way. So it's impossible to feel sorry for him in any way, since this is how he has operated for decades (and he's mostly gotten away with it).

Trump could get a last-minute reprieve, either through the courts giving him more time to come up with the money or accepting a lesser amount as a bond. Trump could also declare bankruptcy, which would snarl everything up in a different court. And even if the New York attorney general does move on Trump's assets, she might just file liens on his properties rather than seizing or attempting to sell them. Trump could fight all these moves in court as well. So Monday might not be the final reckoning for Trump that some are expecting.

Even so, no matter what happens, it's going to be humiliating for Trump on a very personal level. If it comes to it, seeing his real estate empire forcibly dismantled will cut to the heart of his entire public persona. Pleading it is impossible for him to raise the bond shows he's nowhere near as wealthy as he's always made himself out to be (again: last April he swore under oath that he had more than $400 million in cash on hand). The fact that he couldn't convince any company to put up the bond for him proves that the bankers don't trust him anymore. He tried to pledge real estate assets as collateral, but the whole judgment against him was for overstating his properties' values, so it's not too surprising that nobody was interested.

This is all completely separate from his criminal cases, where he might face a comeuppance of a much more serious nature (if any of them ever get around to being heard in a courtroom, that is). But three civil judgments to the tune of around $600 million total is at least something, for now. Donald Trump brought all of this on himself, through his lies. He is finally being forced to pay for some of them. And this all couldn't have happened to a more deserving person, no matter how much Trump whines about the monstrous unfairness of it all.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant