Just a bookkeeping error of $20 million. Happens to me all the time.
The other part of the earlier report seems accurate, however: that he was down to under $4 million in the June reports.
That’s why he reportedly had to beg, borrow or steal (tick one) $60 million from the “independent” super-pac
But he’s a billionaire – just ask him. $60,000,000 should be chump change.
In my limited experience with PACs (for local issues), you can use the money you have for campaign-related stuff and for donating to other PACs or to non-profits. We had like $300 left at the end of one of our campaigns and wished to close it out, so we gave the $300 to a local veteran’s group. Someone had just given us $500 before we closed it out but we could NOT give him his money back (or $300 of it).
Nobody really needs to ask for a refund. The second PAC can legally give money to the first PAC.
As for paying for someone’s legal defense fund, that doesn’t sound legal. But as others have pointed out (and Colbert’s lawyer, Trevor Potter), PAC laws are sketchy.
One thing about this mess is that one of the PACs is a Super-PAC and one is an ordinary PAC. There are different rules for each and those play into this deal. I’m afraid I don’t remember the specifics, but they were spelled out in a WaPo article that I’m too lazy to hunt down.
Also Trump has more legal entanglements than the well-publicized indictments. He’s suing several people and organizations, including CNN and Michael Cohen, for example. I’m sure someone somewhere has a database with the details of all his legal activities. I expect that database is huge.
The federal district court has dismissed Trump’s defamation suit against Trump. Held that CNN’s statement that Trump’s «stolen election » was an example of a Big Lie was a matter of political opinion.
Bolding mine.
I know this was just a typo, but you know it’s only a matter of time before this litigious asshole sues himself.
D’oh!
posting too early in the morning.
Already happened:
By February 2007, Trump Mortgage stopped paying rent to its landlord, 40 Wall Street LLC—which Trump owned, through the Trump Organization. What happened next? One Trump company took the other to court. In July 2007, 40 Wall Street LLC petitioned New York County Civil Court for $57,367.95 (the unpaid rent plus $450 in legal fees) and asked for permission to evict Trump Mortgage from its 25th-floor space. After Trump’s Trump Mortgage LLC failed to respond to the petition, Judge Debra Samuels ruled in favor of the Trump-owned 40 Wall Street LLC, and the struggling mortgage company, which went out of business in 2007, was booted out of Trump’s own building.
Open Secrets, which tracks donations and expenses by politicians, has recently published an article which states that Trump’s PAC has spent $44 million to pay lawyers to represent witnesses in the various cases against Trump.
That raises two issues: (1) is Trump witness tampering, by offering legal counsel to ensure the witness stays “loyal” to Trump’s view of the legal case; (2) is this a political expense? Is a PAC jsut the candidate’s piggy bank for whatever he wants.
The article suggests that Jack Smith is looking into it, and it’s already coming up in the Georgia trial: are the lawyers Trump pays for acting in the witness’s best legal interests, or are they really acting for Trump?
For (1), there are prominent examples where someone with a Trump attorney had a chance to speak to a real attorney and immediately decided they were better off cooperating. So I’d say yes although IANAL.
For (2), I don’t think Trump cares how he is supposed to spend money and regards anyone trying to tell him what he can and cannot do with “his” money as election interference.
The Trump Piggy PAC is starting to lose weight:
I wonder if they’ll name a new version of a Ponzi Scheme after Trump.
In a Ponzi Scheme, you bring in investors by promising them a return on their investment, then bring in a new group of investors, and use their investment to pay off the first group, then use the first group’s successful gains as proof that the investment is sound, which helps bring in a third group whose investment pays off the second group, and so on. Until eventually the money runs out and the last people in get nothing.
In a Trump Scheme, you hire lawyers to defend you, and those lawyers use underhanded means in that defense, and once that is revealed those lawyers get in trouble, so you hire new lawyers to defend those lawyers, who likewise get themselves in trouble in their efforts to defend the original lawyers, who then need their own lawyers, and so on. All of this funded by gullible folks being spun a sob story of persecution by the Deep State, and only their donations can Save America, etc. Eventually the Trump Scheme runs out of money too.
Its probably the only way he can win in court these days. On the other hand I could also imagine it resulting in the judge sanctioning both parties.
Beat ya by five post and two months. 
Article gives an update on Trump’s fund-raising; indications appear to be that his grift is slowing down.
Why donate to Trumps PAC when you can just send your cash directly to Jean Carroll or the State of New York? Don’t forget to save some coins- you will need them to send to Trumps legal team, or to whoever he defames next.
One of the theories I’ve seen about why Trump is taking over more direct control of the RNC is that – whereas it would be legally problematic for his PACs to help pay the civil judgments against him (as opposed to paying his legal bills, which is permissible) – the RNC could do so. Of course, the RNC doesn’t have $400 million, but it gives him another piggy bank he can potentially crack into.
PACs are virtually unrestricted in their activities. Politicians rarely make laws that they would have to follow, and then they don’t enforce them.
Yep. Asa Hutchinson (remember him) is raising it as a concern.
Given his strong performance in the primaries, I’m sure his views will be given great weight by the GOP.