Trump biographer raises questions about his wealth as campaign donors foot the bill for his many lawyers
Former President Donald Trump’s PACs have spent about $50 million in donor money on his legal bills last year, sources told The New York Times.
The “staggering sum” spent by Trump on his legal fees and investigation-related expenses is about the same amount his lone remaining GOP primary opponent Nikki Haley raised across all her committees last year, the Times’ Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher write. Federal Election Commission filings this week are expected to detail the full extent of Trump’s “enormous financial strain,” they added.
Trump, who has a penchant for relying on campaign donations to pay his lawyers if he actually pays them at all, has used his Save America PAC to cover his legal costs. When the PAC ran low on cash last year, Trump asked for an unusual refund of $60 million that had been transferred to the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. PAC. Trump has also been directing 10% of donations raised through Save America to a PAC that primarily pays his lawyers, according to the Times.
How is it legal to use campaign funds for personal legal costs?
Because laws that are not enforced are nothing more than friendly suggestions.
Over ten years ago Colbert showed how PAC money could be legally transformed into a personal slush fund. It was a hilarious segment that he did over an entire season to show how the Citizens United law allows anonymous money to go right into politicians’ pockets. He won a Peabody award for it.
Citizens United will be the death of this country.
It’s payback for the genocide and slavery, probably.
So many even bigger assholes have appeared that Carl Rove hardly rates anymore.
The Emoluments Clause has entered the chat
Emoluments Clause: “I’m interested in that answer too”
I think you mean the Emoluments No-Claws
Same answer, even.
The emoluments clause does not apply to Trump he isn’t a federal office holder.
He was when he was receiving the emoluments.
It’s legal if you accurately specify where the funds will be going. Iirc, his website states that funds will go to legal challenges or whatever.
It’s not
This is Donald J. Trump. Since when has something being illegal ever stopped him?
Republicans always turn a blind eye to their own.
They aren’t campaign funds. They are funds donated to a Political Action Committee (PAC).
The funds are coming from a PAC. I’m hearing the rules are different from normal campaign contributions.
A PAC is a fancy name for Bribe Collection Fund.
It’s not illegal if you run it through the correct laundering methods.
It’s what happens when the rules are being made by the recipients of the bribes.
Anthony “my son gave Trump 250 Million dollars, also money is speech and corporations are people” Kennedy is laughing at us.
I think it’s technically not, but there’s a million loopholes.
Even if it is illegal, what are you gonna do? Charge him? Get in line.
Pretty sure you can use raised funds for anything as long as you disclose what you’re using it for. The questionable part is when he sends an email from his campaign saying “Trump needs your help to stop the woke mob” or whatever and then in the fine print says “money goes to [some ambiguously named PAC called like 'USA Defense” which was created just to pay Trump’s legal bills)"…he technically didn’t say it was for his political campaign.
A white nationalist and their money are soon parted.
He could sell Mar-a-lago so we could all find out what it’s really worth.
The secrets in the bathroom are worth at least a few mil
Close to $2B, as I recall, but they’re already sold to the Saudis.
Fun fact about secrets, they can be sold twice!
Remember, the bathroom had a copier in it - they could be sold infinite times! [Not to mention cellphone cameras.]
2 billion dollars and this MF is still a free man…America has gone to shit.
There’s always money in the banana room
Maybe Trump should call Bob Loblaw if he needs a lawyer? I hear he has a great law blog
Except Bob was a really good lawyer, he’d never work for Trump. Trump would hire Barry Zuckerkorn, who was incompetent and unethical.
Aren’t there a ton of easements on it where any new owner would be required to maintain it as a historic property and commercial country club? I think that’s why the value in the trial was set low.
Like Trump (or maybe a previous owner) essentially donated parts of it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and got tax breaks in exchange for agreeing to preserve everything. So, you’re essentially buying a country club business run in a future Trump Museum that you don’t really own (but still have to maintain).
But do the costs really matter if you never pay your bills?
Fuck off, Pumpkin Tits - you broke-ass, loser motherfucker.
So sick of seeing this CUNT getting away with this shit
FUCK YOU
He has neither the warmth nor depth to be called a cunt. That’s insulting to productive cunts.
How can Trump still be a presidential candidate? I’ve been asking myself that for years now. I just don’t get it.
He’s got an enormous base of support in the party with a majority in the parts of the country that get to decide who the President is.
How can anyone think Trump should get a second term? I realize, of course, that neither the interests of the people nor common sense are a factor in the States, but even the most unscrupulous businessmen should realize by now that Trump is not an option. I mean, someone who manages to squander even such an exorbitant inheritance without any significant returns can’t be considered a smart businessman or any good for business. The only way I can explain the support for Trump is that many influential people backed the wrong horse and are now committed - just the way these people handle their share transactions. But hey, I am not a US-American and so I can’t help but get the impression that you all have lost your minds (even for thinking that this is in any way acceptable). How such a ridiculous circus can be possible in a so-called constitutional state is simply beyond me.
Donald lowered their corporate taxes to nothing. They had three years of stock buybacks on the back of the strong economy Obama set up. Then in the pandemic, instead of being held accountable for raiding the coffers and needing to put money back in, they were given trillions more in handouts. And now they are recording record profits and blaming inflation on Biden.
The influential people make serious bank at the expense of the public every time a Repub gets power. Somehow the economy crashes, people lose their jobs and homes, but it is the wealthy receiving billions or trillions in handouts. So these influential people run propaganda networks to make sure low information voters can be tricked into voting for Repubs.
As for how it can happen, my opinion is because we have FPTP voting. If we had score voting, Donald never would have been selected. Dem voters and Independents all would have ranked every functioning adult higher than Donald.
Also the Electoral College means everyone’s vote is valued less than a Wyoming vote. That violates the spirit of the 14th Amendment IMO. But Donald being able to run violates the letter of the 14th Amendment so what do I know.
I realize most that, but why risk the comfortable status quo? Perhaps it really is megalomania in the form of wanting to return to monarchy-like conditions in which the law not only pretends to apply to everyone, but is actually a law “by the grace of God”. I can well imagine this, given everything that is apparently negotiable in America.
That’s the question we’re all asking ourselves. Aren’t the hoards big enough?
This is a case of the inmates running the asylum. The Republicans in power who know he’s an idiot are stuck with him because he has such a large base of hateful assholes (whose votes they have been courting for decades) who think he’s the second coming. Their votes are the only chance they have at winning, and they have only themselves to blame.
That’s clear, but I don’t understand why there is a need to deviate from business as usual all of a sudden. It can’t be in the interests of the rich and powerful to draw attention to how very wrong things have been going in the so called US democracy for decades. I think that’s extremely dangerous - and if there’s one thing big business wants to avoid at all costs, that’s probably this.
It’s the natural progression of big business cozying up to conservatism since it’s profitable to do so. As soon as Republicans starting allying with far-right groups, they were all in bed with fascists. Instead of risk losing profits short-term, they’ll pretend that everything is fine until it’s not possible to any more.
Yes, that’s probably how it went. Fascism is, of course, a perspective that promises profit and power for such people - it worked excellently for the profiteers in Nazi Germany, nowadays also in Russia (in a slightly different disguise) and elsewhere. The only question that remains is whether the Americans will resist. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really look that way to me at the moment. So perhaps the very unscrupulous have bet on the right horse after all. We’ll have to wait and see.
There are just a lot of overly emotional and very stupid people, unfortunately.
Maggie Haberman can bite my shiny metal ass. She did nothing but normalize and excuse every single thing he did for millions of people. Get her out.
You ever get the feeling that Trump so desperately wants to win so he can change the laws in his favour? Because if he loses, in the polls, in the electoral college, in the courts, at that point there’ll be a crater where he once stood.
And deservedly so. We can only hope.
It’s not a feeling, it’s literally what he said he’d do the first day in office as a dictator for a day. Literally. There’s no hyperbole there.
It’s basically his Get-out-of-Jail free card that he can use to try to wipe away all of his problems. His arguments for total presidential immunity are ludicrous when he’s not in office, but I’m sure if he were to actually be in office again, they wouldn’t be laughed off as much. He has to go all in on this or he’s basically finished. Although I remember thinking this last election too and here we are again, so maybe if Trump loses we’ll still see him running for the 2028 Presidential election (how somebody that unhealthy is still living is beyond me, better men than him have died so much earlier). Not to mention all of Russia’s hopes in turning around their war against Ukraine are riding on this election as well, if they can get Trump back in, they can kick the legs out from under Ukraine in one fell swoop, as with every presidential election, there’s a lot riding on this.
He’s gonna keep running until he either wins or is dead, that’s for certain.
Why is it even legal for them to spend political donations on legal expenses completely unrelated to politics. It’s a stretch, but I can almost see it for the January 6th or maybe even the documents cases, because they’re at least related to his political career.
But sexual assault, defamation, and fraud cases definitely shouldn’t count. They’re cases related to actions he took prior to entering politics.
Let’s create a hypothetical candidate that has followed a blameless, honest (moneyless) path. His/her opponents decide to take that candidate down with frivolous lawsuits. How else can they be defended?
That’s a SLAPP issue, not a campaign finance one, and a perfect example of why we need federal ant-SLAPP laws.
Agreed. I’m just saying campaign finances could be one solution to SLAPP lawsuit problems.
To be clear, Trump’s are not SLAPP related.
Convicted Sex Offender Treason Trump is broke and needs your money to stay out of prison.
He was never convicted of that, it was a civil trial not a criminal one.
He was found liable.
Right, the primary difference being that a criminal trial would be that the statue of limitations would restrict what a prosecutor can achieve, while there is no such limitation for civil suits.
The amount of evidence and the case proceeding would be largely similar in both.
So while you are technically correct for calling that out, I just want to be clear that had this been a criminal trial, the result would very likely have been the same from the jury.
Maybe he would have been, I’m not a lawyer or judge.
I just believe in America and innocent until proven guilty, and he wasn’t proven guilty of that offense.
His actions and responses around the allegations are gross and unbecoming for sure.
Edit:
Right, the primary difference being that a criminal trial would be that the statue of limitations would restrict what a prosecutor can achieve, while there is no such limitation for civil suits.
There’s also the vast difference in burden of proof required for a criminal conviction vs a civil trial. It’s not only the statute of limitations that was at play here.
Innocent until proven guilty is not a mantra.
It is how the legal system needs to work. It does not mean that your are innocent into proven guilty in the eye of the public, or historical records. It’s purely about setting expectations for a working justice system that needs that presumption to function.
That does not mean that a person is innocent and everyone should treat them as if they’re innocent until the verdict comes down.
This is an important distinction to make.
Sure, but there’s a difference between feeling someone is guilty and stating they were convicted. We shouldn’t knowingly be making factually incorrect statements.
It feeds the right when people are so TDS that they are okay with spreading mistruths or fake news.
That’s true and fair.
American justice system in a nutshell.
Guy can be found to have done sexual assault, but criminal prosecutors wouldn’t touch him because he did it in a city where his close personal friend was the mayor. It took 30 years to reach a judgement against him, and even that was for a relatively piddly sum given the time and effort involved in the pursuit. The thing that really got Trump in trouble wasn’t the act of physical and sexual violence. It wasn’t the defamation that followed. It was the way he and his lawyer were shitty on the stand in a second trial resulting from his remarks on the results of the first trial.
This is what it takes to bring a rich man to something approaching the possibility justice in America. And even after all this bullshit, there’s almost zero chance that a Florida court or Sheriff’s Department will assist Carroll in collecting on the damages because… Trump is close personal friends with the governor.
Trump is close personal friends with the governor.
They’re definitely not friends. They just follow the same hateful ideology and will put their differences aside for it.
Now that Trump’s the inevitably nominee, Ron’s falling back into brown-noser mode and will do everything in his power to get Trump to like him. And even if DeSantis wasn’t bending over backwards to please the party’s kingpin, he wouldn’t be terribly inclined to aid a New York feminist and advice columnist in pursuing legal action against The Don.
Yup, he’s putting his dislike of Trump aside for the sake of advancing the Christofascist agenda.
Biden woke
Trump broke
Biden woke
Damn, if only.
Let’s not get crazy
My man is literally always begging for money. He brags about how successful he is at begging for money. And he’s created an enormous cult of personality full of people who will just give him their money as soon as he asks for it.
Trump could have extorted billions out of Putin and/or the Saudis on Inauguration Day. He’s such a manbaby that he can only take money from people who are much, much weaker than he is.
He’s going to have to go blow daddy Putin again for funding.
