Trump’s New Legal Bills Are Hiding an $8 Million Mystery
Trump is using a GOP compliance firm as a go-between to pay lawyers, allowing him to hide who he’s actually paying. Experts have real questions whether he can do that.
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While the motivation behind the opaque payments is unknown, it’s clear that there is a cost-splitting arrangement between Trump’s various fundraising committees.
FEC records show that pairs of Trump PACs frequently reimburse Red Curve on the same date, in the same amounts. And while many of the payments are identical twins—exact dollar figures, down to the penny, on the same day—there are also a number that are fraternal twins, where the payments are nearly the same and made within a few days of each other.
For instance, on March 14, 2023, Trump’s “Save America” leadership PAC—the committee that doubles as his personal legal slush fund—reported a “reimbursement for legal expenses” to Red Curve in the amount of $45,867.44. Two days later, another Trump PAC, called “Make America Great Again PAC” (MAGA PAC), reported paying Red Curve the exact same amount, with the same description: $45,867.44, for “reimbursement for legal expenses.”
In all, The Daily Beast identified at least 21 pairs of these identical or near-identical reimbursements from different Trump committees, made within close proximity of each other.
That’s not always the case. The same day that MAGA PAC made the above matching payment—March 16, 2023—it also reported an additional two Red Curve reimbursements. These were described as “reimbursement for legal fees” and totaled nearly $910,000, but they don’t appear to have any immediately clear correlation to other Red Curve payments at the time.
Campaign finance experts agreed that the pattern suggests these Trump committees, for some unknown reason, have been sharing legal costs. But the payment reports don’t identify the entity or entities that Red Curve initially paid to perform the legal work on Trump’s behalf. And that, the experts said, could pose a problem—because it hides the true vendor and recipient of the funds.
Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs at good government watchdog Common Cause, agreed with Fischer’s assessment that the payments may violate reporting and corporate contribution laws.
“By a legal sleight of hand, it appears that Trump world is trying to hide the true recipients of these donations,” Scherb told The Daily Beast. He noted that corporations aren’t allowed to donate directly to these committees, and that corporations can’t reimburse contributors. The payments, Scherb said, must be “thoroughly investigated to ensure that all entities and individuals are complying with the law.”
“Shenanigans like this are reason #1000 why we need the DISCLOSE Act, which Senate Republicans have blocked at least five times in the last several years,” Scherb added.
Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also told The Daily Beast that the rules are clear about this reporting requirement.
“If it’s going to a vendor, that vendor needs to be disclosed,” Libowitz said. “You can’t pass the money through to hide the eventual destination.”
The 2020 Trump campaign pushed this rule to the absolute limit—potentially even beyond. That campaign enlisted a pass-through scheme that routed vendor payments through a single shell company, obscuring the recipients of nearly $800 million. And while the FEC commissioners issued a bipartisan ruling in 2022 against Hillary Clinton’s campaign for a hidden vendor maneuver, the FEC’s Republican commissioners let the Trump campaign slip the hook one month later.
The Red Curve arrangement, however, has no other parallel in FEC records.
Of the 252 legal reimbursement payments in FEC historical data, 118 of them—nearly half—have come from the Trump committees to Red Curve in the last 15 months. Combined, the 134 non-Trump reimbursements account for less than $550,000. Meanwhile, the Trump reimbursements add up to nearly 15 times that amount—just over $8 million.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-new-legal-bills-are-hiding-an-dollar8-million-mystery