Donald Trump’s legal bills continue to mount. He took in $53 million and burned through $42.8 million in the second quarter. Much of that was used to cover his mounting legal bills.
What It left Donald Trump with $31.8 million on hand. Campaign finance disclosures show that Trump’s network paid $25 million in legal fees. An anonymous source told The Associated Press that that number is closer to $40 million.
Analysis suggests that Trump’s political action committees have paid $59.2 million to more than 100 lawyers since January 2021.
Trump’s legal costs mount amid a host of criminal and civil actions. The former president faces two federal criminal actions over January 6 and the Mar-a-Lago documents case, an indictment in New York over the Stormy Daniels payoff, and a likely criminal case in Georgia over his effort to intimidate Georgia election officials. He also faces several civil actions in New York state including a second suit involving E. Jean Carroll.
Small Campaign Donors Paying Donald Trump’s Legal Bills
Donald Trump advisers told The Washington Post that a Trump political action committee that raises considerable money from small donors has been paying his legal bills.
His spokesman Steven Cheung noted that Trump’s Save America PAC is paying the legal fees for his alleged co-conspirators Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira “to protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed”.
“It’s an extraordinary sum of money,” campaign finance expert Paul Seamus Ryan said. “At the end of the day it’s up to the donors to decide if that’s the way they want their money spent. My sense is if you’re giving money to Trump in 2023, you’re fine with it.”
Nearly 90% of Save America PAC’s covered Donald Trump’s legal costs. Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee received 40% of its funding from donors making $200 or less.
Trump attorney Alina Habba has received $3.5 million from the campaign war chest. Former Florida Solicitor General Christopher Kise, who pressured Trump to accept a plea bargain in the Mar-a-Lago documents, case received $5.8 million. Joe Tacopina, representing Trump in New York state cases, has received $1.8 million.
MSNBC columnist Steve Benen “As Donald Trump confronts serious legal challenges, the former president can take some solace in the fact that his indictments haven’t undermined his support from Republican voters. On the contrary, he seems to have benefited politically from being charged with many felonies, and he now appears to be the prohibitive frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination.
Benen continued, “… [T]he former president and his team have confronted credible allegations of grift for many years, and to date, Trump’s followers have continued to send him money anyway.”
Chris Christie Tells Trump to Sell Trump Tower
Rival and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie chided Trump for using campaign donations to pay his legal bills.
“To spend $40 million of middle class donors’ money on legal fees, $250K refurbishing your plane, $108K on a stylist for your wife. Spend your own money … if you’re running short of it, go sell Trump Tower,” Christie told Newsmax.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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