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WASHINGTON (AP) – Donald Trump is sitting on top of more than $115 million across multiple political committees has positioned himself as a singularly unstoppable force in the GOP that would almost certainly have the resources to swamp his rivals if he launched another presidential campaign.
But the massive pile of money also emerges as a potential vulnerability. His primary fundraiser, Save America PAC, is under new legal scrutiny after the Justice Department issued a round of grand jury subpoenas seeking information about the political action committee’s fundraising practices.
The scope of the probe is unclear. Subpoenas and search warrants issued by the Justice Department in recent days were related to several subjects, including Trump’s PAC, according to people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The subpoenas seek records as well as testimony and ask at least some of the recipients about their knowledge of efforts to engage in voter fraud, according to one of the people.
The subpoenas also ask for records of communications with Trump-allied lawyers who supported efforts to overturn the election results and planned to field bogus voters in battleground states. A particular area of focus appears to be on the “Save America Rally” that preceded the uprising on January 6, 2021 at the US Capitolsaid the person.
The investigation is one of several criminal investigations Trump is currently facing, including the investigation into how documents with classified markings ended up at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club. Regardless of Save America’s ultimate role in the investigations, the spate of developments has drawn attention to the PAC’s leadership, how it has raised money and where those funds have been directed.
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich criticized the subpoenas, saying a “weaponized and politicized Justice Department” is “casting a blind net to intimidate and silence Republicans fighting for his America First agenda.” Representatives for the Ministry of Justice declined to comment.
While Trump has more than $115 million across various committees, the vast majority of it is kept at Save America. The PAC ended July with more than $99 million in cash, according to fundraising records — more than the Republican and Democratic national campaign committees combined.
Trump has continued to drum up small-dollar donations in the months since, frustrating other Republicans who have struggled to raise money ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Save America was created as a “leadership PAC” designed to allow political figures to raise money for other campaigns. But the groups are often used by potential candidates to fund political travel, polls and staff as they “test the waters” ahead of potential presidential runs. The accounts can also be used to contribute money to other candidates and party organizations, helping potential candidates build political capital.
Much of the money Trump has raised was raised in the days and weeks after the 2020 election. That’s when Trump supporters were bombarded with a nonstop stream of emails and texts, many containing capital letters and blatant lies about a stolen election in 2020, where they requested money for an “election defense fund”.
But such a fund has never existed. Instead, Trump has dedicated the money to other purposes. He has funded dozens of rallies, paid staff and used the money to travel while teasing an expected 2024 presidential run.
Other expenses have been more unusual. There was $1 million donated last year to the Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit that employs Cleta Mitchell and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, both of whom encouraged Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election.
There was a $650,000 “charitable contribution” in July to the Smithsonian Institution to help fund portraits of Trump and the former first lady that will one day hang in the National Portrait Gallery, according to Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas.
Much of the money has also funded another kind of defense fund — one that has paid the legal fees of Trump confidants and aides who have been subpoenaed to testify before the committee on Jan. 6.
Overall, Trump’s sprawling political operation has spent at least $8 million on “legal advice” and “legal fees” for at least 40 law firms since the uprising, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures.
It is unclear how much of that money went to legal fees for employees after a congressional committee began investigating the origins of the attack. But at least $1.1 million has been paid to Elections LLC, a company started by former Trump White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino, according to campaign finance and business records. Another $1 million was paid to a legal trust at the same address as Passantino’s company. Passantino did not respond to a request for comment Monday night. Payments have also been made to firms specializing in environmental regulation and property matters.
As of July, only about $750,000 had been distributed to candidates for Congress, with another $150,000 given to candidates for state office, records show. Trump is expected to increase his political spending now that the election season is in full swing, though it remains unclear exactly how much the notoriously thrifty former president will ultimately agree to spend.
Trump has long been tight-lipped about his 2024 plans, saying a formal announcement would trigger campaign finance rules that would in part force him to create a new campaign committee that would be bound by strict fundraising limits.
Meanwhile, Trump’s aides have discussed the prospect of creating a new super PAC or recycling one that already exists to get closer to an expected announcement. While Trump could not use Save America to fund campaign activity after launching a run, aides have discussed the possibility of moving at least some of that money to a super PAC, according to people familiar with the talks.
Campaign finance experts disagree about the legality of such a move. Some, like Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor and campaign finance expert, said he didn’t see a problem.
“There may be some hoops he has to jump through,” he said. But “I don’t see a problem with it going from one PAC to another … I don’t see what would block it.”
Others disagree.
“It’s illegal for a candidate to transfer a significant amount of money from a leadership PAC to a super PAC. You certainly can’t make $100 million,” said Adav Noti, a former attorney for the Federal Election Commission who now works for the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based good governance group focused on money and politics.
And whether Trump would face consequences or not is another matter.
For years, the FEC, which governs campaign finance laws, has been deadlocked. The commission is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, and a majority vote is required to take any enforcement action against a candidate.
In fact, legal experts say Trump has repeatedly run afoul of campaign finance law since launching his 2016 run for the White House, without consequence.
Since his 2016 campaign, more than 50 separate complaints have been filed about Trump’s violation of campaign finance laws. In about half of those cases, FEC lawyers have concluded there was reason to believe he may have broken the law. But the commission, which now includes three Trump-appointed Republicans, has repeatedly stalled.
The list of dismissed complaints against Trump is extensive. In 2021, Republicans on the commission rejected the claim, supported by FEC staff attorneys, that a Trump-orchestrated hush-money payment from his former lawyer to pornographic film star Stormy Daniels amounted to an unreported in-kind contribution. In May, the commission similarly ruled whether his campaign broke the law by hiding how it spent cash during the 2020 campaign.
And over the summer, the commission dismissed complaints stemming from Trump’s threat to withhold $391 million in aid to Ukraine unless Ukrainian officials opened an investigation into the relationship President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden had with a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma , which the FEC’s attorney determined was a potential violation of campaign finance law.
“There is no legal basis whatsoever to believe that Congress intended the FEC to monitor official government actions that may be intended to help an official’s re-election,” the commission’s three Republicans said in a written statement late last month.
That means any enforcement action will likely have to come from the Justice Department.
“He has nothing to fear from the Federal Election Commission until either its structure is changed or there is turnover among the FEC commissioners,” said Brett G. Kappel, a longtime campaign finance lawyer who works at the Washington-based firm Harmon Curran and has represented both Republicans and Democrats. “That doesn’t mean he has nothing to fear from the Justice Department, which is already apparently investigating Red America. As far as I can tell, there are several allegations of fraud that could be the subject of an investigation by the Department of Justice.”
Meanwhile, Trump and Save America continue to solicit contributions from grassroots supporters, blow up fundraisers with aggressive demands like “it needs to be taken care of NOW” and threaten donors that their “Voter Verification” surveys are “OUT OF DATE,” though some of the Republican Senate challengers Trump backed and helped push across the finish line in primaries are struggling to raise money.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has urged those candidates to ask Trump for money that the former president has so far been reluctant to give. That has left the candidates, some of whom presented themselves as McConnell antagonists during their primaries, to bow to McConnell and the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC he controls and has $100 million in reserve.
It also strengthens McConnell’s hand in his long-running feud with Trump, who has called on GOP senators to oust the Kentucky Republican. Some close to Trump acknowledge that the candidates could use the money, but said he does not see it as his responsibility to fill the void.
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Colvin reported from New York.
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