How Trump Uses Supporters’ Donations to Pay His Legal Bills
How Trump Uses Supporters’ Donations to Pay His Legal Bills
Facing a wide array of criminal charges, the former president is using money from small donors to defend himself legally — a practice that raises ethical questions.
Former President Donald J. Trump faces a mountain of legal bills as he defends himself against a wide array of federal and state charges, with the latest coming this week in Georgia.
To pay lawyers, he has often turned to money from supporters: Over the past two years, he has drawn tens of millions of dollars from a political action committee he controls called Save America PAC. Originally set up in 2020 as he galvanized supporters around his baseless claims of election fraud, the group — technically known as a leadership PAC — has been sustained in large part by contributions from small donors.
Experts say the practice is most likely legal but that it raises ethical questions about how Mr. Trump treats his donors.
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Most likely, yes, although the rules governing what PACs and campaign committees can pay for are byzantine and not firmly settled.
A campaign committee cannot pay for things that benefit a candidate personally, including legal bills that are unrelated to government matters.
There is no such restriction on leadership PACs. While these organizations, which are controlled by the candidate, cannot spend money directly on the campaign, they can pay for legal fees.
“Under prevailing F.E.C. interpretation, this whole discussion is moot,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former lawyer at the Federal Election Commission who is now the director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit group. “He can pay all the lawyers, for all the matters, and according to the F.E.C., these rules don’t even matter.”
This has always been wild to me, I feel like it's a cult. Like as a leftist I vote for Biden but I really don't like him. I couldn't imagine liking a politician that much honestly.
What if he was your Messiah? I think it starts to make sense when you realize, broadly speaking, his supporters aren't playing politics, they're playing religious fanaticism.
Yeah but why? Like to me politicians are just like CEOs, they don't care about you and they would let you die as part of a compromise to pass a budget proposal.
The question in my mind is where is the money actually going. We all know he doesn’t like paying his legal fees, just ask Rudy.
It's legal and if his marks want to be fleeced and run themselves into the ground for nothing while diverting funds to the party, so be it. They've got my blessing to do so.
I don't care who pays to represent him. This case is 100% un-representable. He's going down no matter how many billions of dollars he wastes on his defense.