For the third straight quarter, Donald Trump’s former campaign committee turned in a fundraising loss, shedding $1.2 million to start 2022. And the reason for almost all of the Trump campaign’s money problems is a familiar one: lawyers.
According to a campaign finance disclosure filed in recent days, the committee—“Make America Great Again PAC“—handed over about $1.1 million in legal fees between January and the end of March.
That’s more than 40 percent of the PAC’s $2.6 million in total expenses, for the PAC’s biggest deficit since Trump left office. The $1.4 million it raised barely covered its legal bills.
The loss cut MAGA PAC’s cash on hand from about $6.66 million at year’s end to around $5.47 million as of March 31. The committee, which Trump converted from his old campaign after leaving office, now holds about half the $10.7 million it had at the start of 2021.
In the first half of the year, fresh off of election challenges and aimpeachment trial, MAGA PAC ate the vast majority of Trump’s political legal costs—about $7.8 million of the $8 million total. The payouts plummeted in the back half of 2021, with a total $1.7 million spread over those six months, indicating another uptick to kick off 2022.
The biggest winner this quarter was Jesse Binnall, Trump’s top election challenger, whose firm clocked $410,000 for its services. Binnall farms some of those fees out to local counsel, whose names aren’t listed on the reports. One such firm is the Tulsa, Oklahoma, shop Hall Estill, which Binnall retained last year to assist in an ongoing lawsuit alleging civil rights violations at Trump’s COVID comeback rally in June 2020.
MAGA PAC also paid its customary retainer to Elections LLC, a joint venture between three former top campaign aides, which now commands $52,500 a month. (Trump’s Save America joint fundraising committee retains Elections LLC as well.)
Combined, Elections LLC and Binnall’s firm—including the anonymous local subcontractors—absorbed more than half the legal costs on the quarter.
--Roger Sollenberger (The Daily Beast)