QAnon supporter donates money to legal defense fund for Trump allies
A supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory from whom the Trump campaign distanced itself in 2020. A real estate developer and Trump megadonor. A funeral company.
They were among the largest contributors to a legal defense fund set up by allies of Donald J. Trump to help pay mounting legal bills for people linked to the various investigations into the former president. The fund is not intended for Mr. Trump’s own accounts.
The fund, the Patriot Legal Defense Fund Inc., raised a total of $1,624,360 from July through early December, according to documents the group filed with the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday. The group submitted another application on Wednesday showing that no contributions or expenditures had been made. It was unclear why.
The largest donation in the IRS filings Tuesday — $1 million — came from the Caryn L Hildenbrand Living Trust. Mrs. Hildenbrand is also known as Caryn Borland. She and her husband, Michael, gave more than $1 million in campaign-related contributions to Trump’s 2020 reelection effort. Sharing memes and social media posts about the QAnon conspiracy theory led Mike Pence, then vice president, to ask for a cancel fundraiser with them. Attempts to reach the couple were unsuccessful.
The conspiracy theory, embraced by some of Mr Trump’s supporters, involves false claims that top Democrats are Satan-worshipping pedophiles and that the former president has been recruited to break up the global pedophile cabal. Mr. Trump has increasingly nod to the movement and its memes in his social media posts.
The filing on Tuesday listed just 21 contributors, with one donation of just $60. One donation of $34,000 came from Cleveland Funeral Home Inc. Another was from Robert Zarnegin, a wealthy real estate developer in California who has been a frequent donor to Mr. Trump.
Michael Glassner, Mr. Trump’s longtime political aide who is leading the effort, said the group was “pleased with the early support” it had received. He said the Justice Department’s criminal cases against Mr. Trump, which he insisted were politically weaponized, had “required many innocent supporters of President Trump to need lawyers, and the Legal Defense Fund can assist them with these costs.”
Kenny Williams, co-owner of the Cleveland funeral home that made the $34,000 donation, said via text message that his employee had a personal relationship with Mr. Trump, but he declined to answer additional questions about that employee. “We still stand behind him!” he wrote about Mr. Trump. “He is a man of his word.”
So far, none of the money has been allocated to people with legal bills, according to the filing. The largest expense paid by the defense fund was $18,136 for Mr. Trump’s members-only club and residence, Mar-a-Lago. The Florida club hosted a dinner for the defense fund on November 29, which Mr Trump attended.
Most of the money raised appears to have been related to that event.
Another Trump-focused group, a political action committee called Save America, has burned tens of millions of dollars to help pay legal fees for the former president and some people connected to the web of investigations and lawsuits he faces. By mid-year, the last time the group had to file with the Federal Election Commission, Save America had spent more than $20 million in legal fees.
The amount was so large that after sending $60 million to another outside group supporting Trump’s campaign, Save America requested a refund. Save America has been steadily getting refunds from that other outside group, a super PAC called MAGA Inc., according to two people familiar with the matter.
The flood of legal bills, which has increased as Trump prepares for four possible trials in four different jurisdictions after being charged with 91 crimes, is a source of tension within the former president’s sphere of influence. That’s especially the case because Mr. Trump doesn’t like spending his own money on lawyers.
Kitty Bennett research contributed.