The ex-president has reportedly been using his political PAC as a slush fund for personal expenses.
President Donald Trump during a rally in Dalton, Georgia on January 4, 2021
.BY MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
One of the more ironic aspects of Donald Trump’s improbable election win in 2016 was that many of his supporters declared they were voting for him because unlike career politicians, he actually told the truth. In reality, of course, he lied about everything all the time. Whether it was a big lie like the one about how Mexico was going to pay for his wall; a weird lie like the one about having been named Michigan’s “Man of the Year”; an insane lie like the one about windmills causing cancer; a sad, pathetic lie like the one about his inauguration crowd being bigger than Barack Obama’s; or a truly WTF lie like the one about the Boy Scouts of America calling to tell him his crazy speech in front of thousands of children was the best one they’d ever heard, the man spent his entire time in office lying through his caps, to the tune of 30,573 lies in four years. (Or 7,643 lies a year, or 21 lies a day.)
Obviously Trump hasn’t stopped lying since he left Washington, with the biggest lie being that he won the 2020 election, but at the same time, his supporters continue not to care. So while it might tick off a normal person to learn that money they’d donated to a (supposedly) important cause had actually gone to funding personal expenses for a guy who never misses a chance to tell everyone how rich he is, we’re pretty sure the ex-president’s followers will not be bothered.
Per The Washington Post:
Former president Donald Trump’s political PAC raised about $75 million in the first half of this year as he trumpeted the false notion that the 2020 election was stolen from him, but the group has not devoted funds to help finance the ongoing ballot review in Arizona or to push for similar endeavors in other states, according to people familiar with the finances.
Instead, the Save America leadership PAC—which has few limits on how it can spend its money—has paid for some of the former president’s travel, legal costs, and staff, along with other expenses, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the group’s inner workings. The PAC has held on to much of its cash.
An extremely charitable, naive way to read this would be to say that Trump is all talk about trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election but actually isn’t putting any real effort into it at all. But of course that’s not what’s going on here. Trump desperately wants to find evidence to support the baseless lie that a second term was stolen from him, but he just wants someone else to pay for it.
Even as he assiduously tracks attempts by his allies to cast doubt on the integrity of last year’s election, Trump has been uninterested in personally bankrolling the efforts, relying on other entities and supporters to fund the endeavors...The tactic allows Trump to build up a war chest to use in the 2022 midterms on behalf of candidates he favors—and to stockpile cash for another potential White House run, an unprecedented maneuver for a former president.
In the meantime, the monthslong audit of Maricopa County’s ballots in Arizona—which is expected to cost millions—is being paid for primarily by nonprofit entities that do not disclose their donors and private individuals such as former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne. A lawsuit seeking a similar audit in Fulton County, Georgia, has been financed by small donations, according to the group that brought the claim. A spokeswoman for Trump did not answer questions on whether the group is considering putting money into the ballot review efforts. The group will have to publicly disclose its fundraising and spending for the first half of the year by July 31.
Since leaving office, Trump has repeatedly pushed for various states to overturn the election results, sending out a blizzard of statements with unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. He has consulted with state officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, and has described state ballot reviews as the key to prove he won the 2020 election. And his political group has repeatedly urged donors to give by claiming that Trump is working to protect their vote—fundraising pitches that his advisers say remain the most lucrative. “We need you to join the fight to SECURE OUR ELECTIONS!” reads one Facebook ad.... The former president has repeatedly made false claims of irregularities in the Arizona vote, asserting in a statement this month that it amounted “to hundreds of thousands of votes or, many times what is necessary for us to have won.”
The Save America PAC “is probably the most lucrative thing he’s had in terms of cash flow since the Plaza casino in Atlantic City,” Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer, told the Post. “This is just as lucrative. He has recognized because of what happened after the election—he can make money as a candidate.”
Of course this isn’t the first time Trump has scammed supporters out of money. In April, New York Times reporter Shane Goldmacher revealed that the Trump campaign had ripped off supporters for tens of millions of dollars through a scheme in which when they donated money, the default option authorized the campaign to transfer the pledged amount from people’s bank accounts not once but every single week. Later the campaign introduced a second prechecked box that doubled a person’s contribution and was thus known internally as a “money bomb.” (In order for people to have noticed this, they would have had to wade through “lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.”) And the scheme continued after Trump lost the election, with his campaign reportedly “continu[ing] the weekly withdrawals through prechecked boxes all the way through December 14.” Those withdrawals, the Times noted, occurred “as [Trump] raised tens of millions of dollars for his new political action committee, Save America.”
One of the more ironic aspects of Donald Trump’s improbable election win in 2016 was that many of his supporters declared they were voting for him because unlike career politicians, he actually told the truth. In reality, of course, he lied about everything all the time. Whether it was a big lie like the one about how Mexico was going to pay for his wall; a weird lie like the one about having been named Michigan’s “Man of the Year”; an insane lie like the one about windmills causing cancer; a sad, pathetic lie like the one about his inauguration crowd being bigger than Barack Obama’s; or a truly WTF lie like the one about the Boy Scouts of America calling to tell him his crazy speech in front of thousands of children was the best one they’d ever heard, the man spent his entire time in office lying through his caps, to the tune of 30,573 lies in four years. (Or 7,643 lies a year, or 21 lies a day.)
Obviously Trump hasn’t stopped lying since he left Washington, with the biggest lie being that he won the 2020 election, but at the same time, his supporters continue not to care. So while it might tick off a normal person to learn that money they’d donated to a (supposedly) important cause had actually gone to funding personal expenses for a guy who never misses a chance to tell everyone how rich he is, we’re pretty sure the ex-president’s followers will not be bothered.
Per The Washington Post:
Former president Donald Trump’s political PAC raised about $75 million in the first half of this year as he trumpeted the false notion that the 2020 election was stolen from him, but the group has not devoted funds to help finance the ongoing ballot review in Arizona or to push for similar endeavors in other states, according to people familiar with the finances.
Instead, the Save America leadership PAC—which has few limits on how it can spend its money—has paid for some of the former president’s travel, legal costs, and staff, along with other expenses, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the group’s inner workings. The PAC has held on to much of its cash.
An extremely charitable, naive way to read this would be to say that Trump is all talk about trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election but actually isn’t putting any real effort into it at all. But of course that’s not what’s going on here. Trump desperately wants to find evidence to support the baseless lie that a second term was stolen from him, but he just wants someone else to pay for it.
Even as he assiduously tracks attempts by his allies to cast doubt on the integrity of last year’s election, Trump has been uninterested in personally bankrolling the efforts, relying on other entities and supporters to fund the endeavors...The tactic allows Trump to build up a war chest to use in the 2022 midterms on behalf of candidates he favors—and to stockpile cash for another potential White House run, an unprecedented maneuver for a former president.
In the meantime, the monthslong audit of Maricopa County’s ballots in Arizona—which is expected to cost millions—is being paid for primarily by nonprofit entities that do not disclose their donors and private individuals such as former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne. A lawsuit seeking a similar audit in Fulton County, Georgia, has been financed by small donations, according to the group that brought the claim. A spokeswoman for Trump did not answer questions on whether the group is considering putting money into the ballot review efforts. The group will have to publicly disclose its fundraising and spending for the first half of the year by July 31.
Since leaving office, Trump has repeatedly pushed for various states to overturn the election results, sending out a blizzard of statements with unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. He has consulted with state officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, and has described state ballot reviews as the key to prove he won the 2020 election. And his political group has repeatedly urged donors to give by claiming that Trump is working to protect their vote—fundraising pitches that his advisers say remain the most lucrative. “We need you to join the fight to SECURE OUR ELECTIONS!” reads one Facebook ad.... The former president has repeatedly made false claims of irregularities in the Arizona vote, asserting in a statement this month that it amounted “to hundreds of thousands of votes or, many times what is necessary for us to have won.”
The Save America PAC “is probably the most lucrative thing he’s had in terms of cash flow since the Plaza casino in Atlantic City,” Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer, told the Post. “This is just as lucrative. He has recognized because of what happened after the election—he can make money as a candidate.”
Of course this isn’t the first time Trump has scammed supporters out of money. In April, New York Times reporter Shane Goldmacher revealed that the Trump campaign had ripped off supporters for tens of millions of dollars through a scheme in which when they donated money, the default option authorized the campaign to transfer the pledged amount from people’s bank accounts not once but every single week. Later the campaign introduced a second prechecked box that doubled a person’s contribution and was thus known internally as a “money bomb.” (In order for people to have noticed this, they would have had to wade through “lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.”) And the scheme continued after Trump lost the election, with his campaign reportedly “continu[ing] the weekly withdrawals through prechecked boxes all the way through December 14.” Those withdrawals, the Times noted, occurred “as [Trump] raised tens of millions of dollars for his new political action committee, Save America.”
BY BESS LEVIN
JULY 23, 2021
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