Donald Trump may finally get the money to start paying down his legal bills, after his social media company completed a merger Friday with a wealthy shell company.

Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corporation approved the merger with Trump Media & Technology Group, which has nearly run out of cash. The deal will inject more than $300 million into Trump Media and keep Truth Social, the former president’s personal social media platform, up and running.

Trump Media will now debut on the stock market with a value of more than $5 billion. Trump will own a dominant stake in the company worth more than $3 billion.

The merger comes just days before Trump must post the $464 million bond in his New York civil fraud trial. If he fails to secure the massive amount, the state attorney general can begin seizing his assets as repayment. Although the merger will provide Trump with an unexpected windfall, he may not be able to cash in just yet.

Trump is prohibited from selling any of his shares or using them as collateral for a loan for six months. He can ask the board of Digital World Acquisition Corporation to waive that rule for him, but it is unclear if they will agree.

This is a developing story.

After having reached out to several guarantors and 30 suretors for help posting his $464 million New York bank fraud bond, Donald Trump suddenly wants everyone to know he actually does have the cash.

In a bizarre rant on Friday morning, the man who was found to have defrauded banks and investors by overvaluing himself and the value of his properties claimed that he had accrued the wealth by way of “HARD WORK, TALENT, AND LUCK.”

Trump also admitted he has nearly half a billion dollars in cash.

The confession directly contradicts a filing from his legal team last month arguing that it would be “impossible” to secure a bond covering the full amount of the multimillion-dollar ruling.

Trump’s words will surely help out New York Attorney General Letitia James, who on Wednesday urged an appeals court to ignore Donald Trump’s latest effort to worm his way out of paying the $464 million disgorgement from his bank fraud trial.

The former president has until Monday to pay off the half-billion-dollar disgorgement—and if he doesn’t, James can begin taking steps to seize his assets to cover the debt, including 40 Wall Street and Trump Tower.

But Trump is juggling more than the fine deadline. Paying out of pocket could potentially put a major Wall Street deal on the line for the former president, as well. On Friday, investors in Truth Social are expected to sign off on a deal that would allow the company to go public, potentially offering a gigantic financial windfall for the GOP presidential pick. In a public version of the company, which would begin trading in just a few weeks, Trump would own at least 58 percent of the shares—a stake valued at $3 billion, reported Politico.

It would, however, trip him up in the short term. In order to begin the process, Trump would need to tie up his shares of the company in a lock-up agreement for the next six months, and any potential off-loading by the former president could be seen as cataclysmic to a deal that rides on his involvement.

With just a day left in Congress, retiring Representative Ken Buck has delivered a parting gift—that looks more like a parting shot—to his fellow Republicans.

Buck signed House Democrats’ foreign aid discharge petition Thursday night, the first Republican to do so. If the petition, which was launched earlier this month, reaches 218 signatures, it would force a vote on a $95 billion foreign aid package. The package, which has already passed the Senate, includes $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, an increasingly unpopular issue among far-right Republicans.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to consider the aid package, which would also give aid to Israel and Taiwan, despite it passing the Senate with broad bipartisan support, because it does not include regulations for the U.S.-Mexico border that he considers strict enough. But if the aid bill makes it to the House floor, it is expected to pass, again with bipartisan backing.

As of Thursday night, the discharge petition had 188 signatures. It needs just 30 more to pass.

Buck also signed a competing discharge petition to force a vote on a package that includes both Ukraine aid and new border restrictions. Other Republicans have also signed on to that petition, which has only 16 signatures so far.

Although Friday is Buck’s last day in Congress, his signatures will remain on both petitions until his temporary successor is chosen in a special election. If the successor also signs either petition, Buck’s name will be removed. The special election to replace Buck won’t be held until June, coinciding with the Colorado primaries.

Despite sitting on the far-right wing of his party, Buck has found himself at odds with his fellow Republicans in recent years. In fact, the far-right House Freedom Caucus voted Tuesday night to oust Buck from its ranks. One member, speaking anonymously, told The Hill that Buck hadn’t attended caucus meetings regularly for months.

The member cited Buck breaking with Republicans on “several major issues” and “leaving the conference hanging with a historically narrow margin” as the main reasons for his removal.

When Buck first announced his retirement in November, he slammed the GOP for pushing “self-serving lies,” including that the 2020 election had been stolen. More recently, he has been seemingly the only Republican who refused to fall in line with his party’s efforts to impeach Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Buck has repeatedly pointed out that neither impeachment effort is based on any evidence of wrongdoing.........

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