The former president must either pay the full amount in cash or secure a bond in order to continue his appeal.

If he is unable to do so by 25 March, he faces the prospect of some of his real estate assets being seized by the state’s attorney general.

Mr Trump said that securing a bond of that size was “practically impossible”.

For a fee, a bonding company would guarantee the full amount to the New York court.They would then have to pay it if Mr Trump loses his appeal and cannot do so himself.

In his statement, Mr Trump said that the bond he was asked to pay would be “impossible for any company, including one as successful as mine”.

“The bonding companies have never heard of such a bond, of this size, before,” he said.

Mr Trump’s team spent “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world”, his lawyers wrote in a court filing.

But they concluded that “very few bonding companies will consider a bond of anything approaching that magnitude”.The lawyers said they had approached 30 companies without success.