Donald Trump’s scammy, aggressive fundraising tactics have been making news since he rode down that escalator to announce his white nationalist presidential bid seven years ago. The Jan. 6 House committee revealed that Trump was fundraising for an election legal defense fund that did not exist, and that the proceeds from it have instead lined the pockets of Trump family and hangers-on.
Since he lost the election, Trump’s Save America PAC has been raking in tens of millions more from Trump supporters. So where are all these millions coming from, the money for that non-existent defense fund and for the Save America PAC that just keeps on raking it in? Retirees, in large part, The Washington Post finds: more than half of the donations are from people on Social Security. The Post reviewed Federal Election Commission records for the Save America PAC and a Save America joint fundraising committee, data showing that “nearly two-thirds of those 2.5 million contributions came from people who listed their occupation as ‘retired.’ More than 6 in 10 were contributions of $100 or less from retirees.”
Trump has raised over $390 million since his election loss, another review by The New York Times finds, and “much of the money spent by political committees affiliated with Mr. Trump went toward paying off his 2020 campaign expenses and bolstering his political operation in anticipation of an expected 2024 presidential run.” One of those groups bolstering his operation is the America First Policy Institute, a supposed think tank, which of course has “paid to hold events with Mr. Trump at his private clubs, including Mar-a-Lago, in South Florida, and Bedminster, in New Jersey.”
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Largely on the backs of the small dollar donors who keep falling for his snake oil. “Small-dollar donors use scarce disposable income to support candidates and causes of their choosing to make their voices heard, and those donors deserve the truth about what those funds will be used for,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren said at Monday’s hearing. Like Don Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, getting $60,000 for her two-minute introduction of Trump at the Jan. 6 rally that kicked off the insurrection.
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Of the $98 million raised for the Save America PAC, the one he created after the election and is the “primary hub of his ongoing political operations,” just $4 million had gone to candidates, other PACs or party committees by the end of April of this year.
If they’re still giving money to Trump, those small-dollar donors won’t even really care that their money is going to feather TrumpCo’s nest. They’re that deep into it. But the rule of law demands that the government care. The Justice Department should investigate Trump’s PACs as it has done a number of scam PACs and, if it finds evidence of fraud, levy charges like it’s done against those scams.
“It would certainly be novel for the Justice Department to pursue a fraud case against a former president’s PAC, but Trump’s fraudulent postelection fund-raising was novel, too,” Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance expert at the watchdog group Documented, told the Times. He pointed out that the amount of money raised since the election by Trump was “entirely unprecedented.”
Common Cause’s Stephen Spaulding sees ample evidence in what the committee has found thus far for the Justice Department to investigate whether these actions have “crossed the line into wire fraud.”
Meanwhile, Trump just keeps on building that war chest, spending little of what he takes in on the candidates and causes he supposedly supports. Just this week, they sent out another one, Trump Jr. asking people to pay for the opportunity to put their name on the “official” birthday card for his dad.
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