Former President Donald Trump spent about $50 million from Republican donors on legal bills in 2023 as he faced a panoply of criminal and civil charges, according to a report by The New York Times.
Thus far in the 2024 primary, Trump’s Save America PAC, has spent about as much money on legal bills as Trump’s only competitor, Nikki Haley, has managed to raise for all her campaign committees combined over the past year, the report said.
The massive sum of money covered expenses for Trump’s legal defense, as well as payments to lawyers who represented witnesses involved in Trump’s spiraling legal web.
Sources told the Times that Trump spent more money than his campaign raised during the second half of 2023, while millions of dollars in donations were moved to the PAC in recent months to help pay Trump’s legal defense.
The account initially received a surge of donations after the 2020 election — which Trump lost but falsely claimed to his followers that the process was rigged.
As the Save America fund began drying up last year, Trump privately called on another pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., to give back $60 million that was initially intended to help support his 2024 campaign.
Instead, the money was transferred into Save America, which is one of the largest funds that continues to cover Trump’s runaway legal bills.
In the latter half of 2023, MAGA Inc. returned $30 million to Save America, averaging $5 million per month on top of $12.5 million in refunds the super PAC had already reported in the first half of the year.
Additionally, Trump allocated 10 percent of online donations to Save America, meaning 10 cents of every dollar from his supporters goes to the PAC and from there to his lawyers, the Times reported.
Another pro-Trump PAC called Make America Great Again has also helped cover Trump’s legal bills.
During the first six months of 2023, Save America channeled $5.85 million to the Make America Great…
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