Trump has already spent millions from donors to cover legal fees
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Last year, Donald Trump spent roughly $13.3 million from his political action committee, Save America, on his own legal fees.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
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NEW YORK – As Donald Trump prepares to mount a legal defence in the first criminal trial a former American president has ever faced,
Last year, he spent roughly US$10 million (S$13.3 million) from his political action committee (PAC), Save America, on his own legal fees, federal election filings show.
Trump, the front runner in the early days of the campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, arraigned on Tuesday in Manhattan on 34 felony charges.
It was not immediately known whether he might set up a separate legal defence fund to cover the expenses associated with the case in New York, which stems from hush money payments to a porn actress
Those federal election filings, furthermore, showed that Trump’s PAC paid more than US$16 million overall in legal-related expenses to various law firms and lawyers in 2021 and 2022, including those directly related to Trump and for lawyers representing witnesses in investigations he is facing.
The payments have drawn scrutiny from some campaign finance experts, who have questioned whether Trump, as a candidate, can continue to use the PAC to pay for his personal legal bills and circumvent rules for traditional candidate committees.
At the same time, sceptics say Trump is operating in a grey area, particularly if he is charged with a campaign finance violation in connection with concealing a payment to Ms Stormy Daniels to ensure she did not go public with her story of a sexual liaison with him.
His lawyers could argue that those legal expenses are campaign-related, said Dr Richard Hasen, a law and political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an election law expert.
“In these campaign finance cases, if it’s murky, some campaign lawyers see that as a green light,” he said.
One of Trump’s lawyers in the case, Mr Joseph Tacopina, did not immediately respond to questions about how the former president planned to pay for his defence. Mr Timothy Parlatore, another lawyer who has represented Trump in various litigation cases, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump would not be the first politician to push the envelope when paying for a legal defence from political coffers.
Mr Larry Craig, a Republican who represented Idaho in the Senate until 2009, was ordered to repay US$200,000 and was fined US$45,000 for using campaign funds to pay legal fees that he had incurred while trying to withdraw his guilty plea in an airport sex sting case.
The vast majority of Trump’s PAC money was raised before he officially entered the 2024 presidential race on Nov 15, 2022. At the end of 2022, the PAC had just over US$18 million in cash on hand, its federal filings show.
Trump spent some of the money on fruitless efforts to show widespread election fraud. He also used it to defend against various matters related to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan 6, 2021.
The PAC that Trump’s advisers set up allowed for general use of the money, so long as it did not directly support a future candidacy.
He has also long been accused of failing to pay some lawyers who have represented him in a host of legal entanglements over his business and political career. NYTIMES
