Former President Donald Trump’s political action committee (PAC) has spent more than $40 million on legal fees in 2023.
Summary
Former President Donald Trump’s political action committee (PAC) has spent more than $40 million on legal fees in 2023.
- Trump’s PAC, Save America, spent $40.2 million in legal fees, according to its disclosure to the Federal Election Commission. That figure is more than double what the PAC spent on legal fees for all of 2022.
- Save America has spent nearly $56 million on legal fees since Trump left office in early 2021. His PAC’s legal spending has drawn the attention of prosecutors, who have asked witnesses who is paying for their attorneys and why.
- The former president faces an array of legal travails, including: a multi-count federal indictment in Florida in the classified document imbroglio, state charges in New York related to the porn star “hush money” affair, and a potential federal indictment in Washington and state charges in Georgia related to the 2020 election.
- Trump’s legal fees have taken such a toll on his PAC’s finances that the committee requested a $60 million refund on a contribution it made to another Trump-aligned outside group.
- Effectively, the billionaire businessman is using money raised from small-dollar donors to cover his personal legal fees stemming from multiple federal and state investigations.
- CNN’s Stephen Collinson called the news of Trump’s legal spending another sign that Trump’s presidential campaign “is partly designed to bankroll his defense and beat criminal charges.”
- Axios pointed out Trump spent more on legal fees than his campaign raised in the entire second quarter, and legal fees represent the single biggest line-item on Trump’s campaign budget.
- The New York Times reported Trump plans to create a legal defense fund to cover legal bills incurred by his allies, witnesses, and defendants in the investigations into his conduct. The fund would not cover Trump’s own legal bills, which would likely continue to be paid by his donors through his PAC.
- The Ron DeSantis presidential campaign has opened a new line of attack on Trump based on his legal spending, according to Fox News. DeSantis communications director Andrew Romeo said Trump had spent tens of millions “falsely attacking Ron DeSantis and paying his own legal fees, not a cent on defeating Joe Biden.”
- The Wall Street Journal noted the steep legal bills highlight “the legal peril facing the former president, who is bracing for a third indictment as early as this week over his attempts to undo the 2020 election results.”
- The New York Post quoted campaign finance expert Paul Seamus Ryan, who said there are no “legal red flags” in “extraordinary sum of money” Trump is spending on legal fees. “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,” Ryan told the Post.
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© Dominic Moore, 2023
