How Trump uses campaign funds to pay legal bills



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The filings do not address the value of work for which you have not been charged, such as the unpaid position of Rudolph W. Giuliani as your personal attorney. Nor do they explain the legal support that Trump, as president, receives from the Justice Department, which has helped him defend him on issues that blur the line between his public and private roles, such as the constitutional prohibition on one president receiving benefits from others. governments and efforts to obtain your tax returns and financial records.

The advent of the special count account for legal expenses has caused an explosion of cash available to both political parties. But because the Federal Elections Commission has provided little guidance on how money deposited in this account can be spent, political parties have used them for a variety of seemingly unrelated purposes, including charter flights, records show.

Perkins Coie, a prominent firm that handles Democratic candidates, has received $ 17 million from the Democratic National Committee alone in the past four years, also benefiting from this new flow of large donations to the party.

In Trump’s case, reliance on high-dollar donations raised questions about whether taxpayers in casinos, Wall Street, coal, and other industries expect anything in return.

Republican donors who have sent large amounts of money since 2019 to this special RNC legal account include Joseph Craft, who is the CEO of a coal mining company that has benefited from Trump’s regulatory actions. They also include Stephen A. Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone Group, and Thomas J. Barrack Jr., both private equity investors who have been close to the president for a long time, and members of the Fertitta family of Las Vegas, who own a casino there.

Merritt, the spokeswoman for the Republican committee, rejected any suggestion that the donations were made to try to influence Trump.

“That is an absurd and unfounded accusation,” he said. “Our donors are highly motivated by the radical attempts by Democrats to try to take away the voice of the American people by playing elections through the courts, and they fully support our fight to defend the integrity of the elections, fight impeachment, and defy attacks by Democrats on the president. “

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