Strapped with legal bills, enormous court-mandated fines, and steady campaign spending, Donald Trump is staring down a severe cash crunch that shows no indication of waning. Last month, the Trump campaign reported a net loss of roughly $2.6 million, bringing in around $8.8 million but spending about $11.4 million, according to Federal Election Commission filing. Worse still, a separate filing shows the former president’s Save America PAC, an organization he has used to cover his legal bills following the 2020 election, received a mere $8,508 in donations in January, far from the nearly $3.9 million it spent that month.
The PAC ended January with $1 million in the black, but not because of a new spurt of donations. Instead, to keep afloat his legal slush fund, Trump arranged for a multimillion-dollar infusion from a separate pro-Trump PAC, in $5 million increments, according to The Daily Beast. (Last year, Trump’s political fundraising committees burned through more than $50 million on legal fees alone.) The outlet noted that nearly 75% of Save America’s January spending went to legal fees and paying the lawyers defending Trump in his sprawling cases, which include four criminal indictments and several civil suits.
Trump has also been ordered to pay a total of $88.3 million to E. Jean Carroll after he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Moreover, the ruling in his New York civil fraud case found him liable for a $355 million fine, plus $100 million in prejudgment interest, reportedly enough to potentially drain all of his cash reserves. In both cases, Trump has denied wrongdoing and plans to appeal. On Tuesday, New York attorney general Letitia James warned that Trump could lose some of his prime assets. “If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” James told ABC News, adding that she looks at Trump’s 40 Wall Street building “each and every day.”
If Trump continues to spend at the pace he did in 2023, he will run out of funds he can use for legal fees by the middle of the year, as reported by Bloomberg News, which noted that this means he will subsequently have to turn to donors or the Republican National Committee for financial aid. Perhaps in preparation for this outcome, Trump has sought to fill RNC leadership posts with loyalists, including his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. Of course, with a Forbes estimated net worth of $2.6 billion, Trump is more than capable of self-funding. But he has in the past resisted spending his own money on legal and campaign costs.
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