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By Jarrett Renshaw and Joseph Tanfani
(Reuters) – As President Donald Trump seeks to discredit last week’s election with unfounded allegations of election fraud, his team has bombarded supporters with requests for money to help pay for legal challenges to the results: “The left will try STEAL these elections! “reads a text.
But any donations of small dollars from Trump’s grassroots donors will not go toward legal expenses at all, according to a Reuters review of the legal language in the requests.
A donor would have to give more than $ 8,000 before the money goes into the “tally account” set up to fund election challenges, including counts and lawsuits for alleged wrongdoing, fundraising disclosures show.
Emailed requests send supporters to an “Official Election Defense Fund” website asking them to sign up to receive recurring donations to “protect results and keep fighting even after Election Day.”
The fine print makes it clear that most of the money will go to other priorities.
A large portion of the money goes to “Save America,” a Trump leadership political action committee or PAC, created Monday, and the Republican National Committee (RNC). Under Federal Election Commission rules, both groups have wide leeway in how they can use the funds.
The Trump campaign, the RNC and Trump’s new PAC Save America did not respond to requests for comment.
Leadership PACs like Save America are often established by prominent political figures to spend money on other candidates, while also paying for personal expenses such as travel and hotel stays.
The revelations would allow Trump and the RNC to funnel donations to other political causes or campaigns, such as the two January Senate runoff elections in Georgia that could determine control of the Senate and are likely to rank among the most expensive races in history. from the united states.
Trump’s applications website has a headline that says “OFFICIAL ELECTION DEFENSE FUND” and “CONTRIBUTE NOW.”
Scrolling down the page would take the donor to the fine print, which shows that donations are split between “Save America,” which gets 60% of the money, and RNC, which gets the other 40%. None of the money flows into Trump’s official “tally” committee fund until Trump’s stake in Save America reaches the legal contribution limit of $ 5,000, according to the disclosures.
That means, before a dollar enters the counting fund, Save America would receive $ 5,000 and the RNC about $ 3,300. Donations to the tally committee are legally limited to $ 2,800.
If a Trump donor donated $ 500, for example, $ 300 would go to Trump’s PAC Save America, $ 200 to the RNC, and nothing would go to his electoral defense fund.
A Republican political strategist said Trump is misleading supporters that they could make small donations to whatever cause he endorses.
“It’s important to be honest with people, especially those who are digging deep in their pockets for $ 25,” said Michael DuHaime, former RNC political director. “If you tell them they are going to pay the legal fees, well then they should go for the legal fees.”
Darrell Scott, an Ohio pastor who helped found the National Diversity Coalition for Trump and served on the president’s transition team in 2016, says he sees no problem diverting money to the PAC leadership or the RNC.
“I see this as two pockets on the same pair of pants. It doesn’t matter if it goes to the left or right pocket,” Scott said. “Ultimately, the money will be used for a legitimate purpose that his followers will support.”
DEMAND RAIL
The fundraising pitches have channeled Trump’s ire and his refusal to accept the results of an election that mainstream media called on Saturday for his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, the former vice president. Most of the Republican Party has sided with Trump’s rhetoric, either by remaining silent or publicly supporting the electoral challenges.
The Trump campaign has filed a series of lawsuits to overturn the results in key states without presenting evidence to support their illegal voting charges. Instead, Trump’s lawsuits have generally alleged violations of the process, such as a lack of access for Republican observers. Legal experts said neither case was broad enough to invalidate the number of votes needed to overturn Biden’s alleged victory.
The judges have quickly dismissed many of the lawsuits. State election officials, including Republicans, have said there was no widespread fraud. Only a handful of Republican senators have acknowledged Biden’s victory. Many more have not, but some Republicans have suggested that their patience with Trump’s legal fight may soon run out.
As the president battles what Democrats have called his inevitable expulsion from the White House, his fundraising campaign seeks to replenish campaign coffers that were depleted during the presidential race, according to data from the Federal Elections Commission.
Trump’s re-election team started 2020 with an impressive cash advantage, thanks to a massive fundraising operation, which included joint efforts with the Republican Party. But the advantage evaporated when the Trump campaign consumed $ 1.4 billion of the $ 1.6 billion raised in the past two years.
In mid-October, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party re-election team were left with $ 223.5 million and had to cut back on advertising. The Trump campaign itself only had $ 43 million in the final three weeks of the presidential election, while Biden and the Democrats had $ 432 million in cash for the final stretch, including $ 177.3 million in the Biden campaign.
‘EXPLOSIVE LIFESTYLES’
Post-election fundraising emails for Trump, sometimes issued hourly for the past few days, used names like the Electoral Defense Task Force and the Official Electoral Defense Fund. Initially, the revelations said that Trump would direct a large part of the contributions to pay off the campaign debt.
But the language of the disclosure changed after Trump’s campaign treasurer Bradley Crate on Monday joined the Save America political action committee. Crate did not respond to requests for comment.
Unlike campaign funds, which have strict controls on how they can be spent, leadership PACs like Save America have few restrictions. Republicans and Democrats alike have come under fire for using them to pay family members and to fund fancy events in exotic locations. A 2018 report from the Campaign Legal Center and Issue One, two advocacy groups for campaign finance reform, said that some leadership PACs have been used as vehicles to “subsidize the lavish lifestyles” of politicians “with the donor coins “.
Larry Noble, a former general counsel to the Federal Election Commission, said Trump could use the committee to fund a post-election political career. He said the argument is misleading to donors who don’t read the fine print.
“He’s really making a big fuss about defying the election, and it’s very possible that that’s the reason a lot of people can give without paying attention or understanding what the political language is,” Noble said. “It is quite dangerous for our democracy to use the attack on our elections as a fundraising tool.”
The North Carolina Republican Party has launched a similar strategy, using electoral challenges as a way to raise funds for other purposes. In several mass emails to potential donors this week, the party says, along with images of Trump, that it is seeking money to help protect the integrity of the election.
The legal disclosures, however, show that the money is going into an account to pay for the general expenses of the party and not directly to the challenges of this presidential election. Trump is expected to win all 15 electoral votes from North Carolina.
“They should be more transparent,” said a prominent North Carolina Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If they are requesting money to help with a legal challenge, and instead the money is going to pay the political director’s salary, that doesn’t seem right.”
Tim Wigginton, a spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, said in a statement that the party wants to “make sure all legal ballots are counted,” but did not address questions about whether or why fundraising appeals are misleading. donations are not directed to legal defense.
(Information from Jarrett Renshaw and Joe Tanfani; additional information from Tom Hals and Tim Reid; edited by Brian Thevenot)
