Trump's PACs have spent about $50 million on legal fees in 2023

Donald J. Trump piled up legal fees in 2023 when he was indicted four times. Last year he spent about $50 million in donor money on legal bills and research-related expenses, according to two people briefed on the figure.

It's a staggering amount. His only remaining rival in the 2024 Republican primary, Nikki Haley, has raised about as much money across all her committees over the past year as Trump's political accounts spent paying the bills arising from his various legal defenses, including lawyers for to give evidence.

The exact amount spent on legal bills will be reported in new filings with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday. But even those totals can be inaccurate, depending on how certain expense items are categorized by those doing the paperwork.

The broader picture expected to be painted in the documents is that of a former president on his way to the Republican nomination while facing enormous financial pressure.

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Mr. Trump, who has long loathed paying lawyers himself and has a history of inciting those who represent him, has used money in his political action committee, known as Save America, to underwrite his legal bills . The account was originally flooded with donations collected in the period immediately following the 2020 election, when he made widespread and false claims of voter fraud.

But when Save America's coffers were nearly empty last year, Mr. Trump tried to replenish them through a highly unusual transaction: He asked for a refund of $60 million that he had initially transferred to another group, a pro- Trump super PAC called MAGA Inc. ., in support of his 2024 campaign.

In addition, Mr. Trump has spent 10 percent of donations raised online to Save America, meaning 10 cents of every dollar he has received from supporters goes to a PAC that mainly funds his lawyers.

Mr. Trump has paid the legal fees through both Save America and a second account called the Make America Great Again PAC, which is an outgrowth of his 2020 re-election committee. In the first half of 2023, Save America transferred $5.85 million to the Make America Great Again PAC, which spent almost the entire amount on legal and research-related costs.

The amount of approximately $50 million is a combination of such costs through both groups.

Mr. Trump's super PAC, MAGA Inc., returned $30 million to Save America in the second half of 2023, an average of $5 million a month. That's on top of the $12.5 million in refunds the super PAC previously reported in the first half of the year.

The net result was that $42.5 million was diverted from a super PAC focused on electing him to the presidency to a committee now primarily concerned with paying his lawyers. The reimbursement nearly equaled the $43.8 million the super PAC spent last year on so-called independent expenditures, such as television advertising, to shape the 2024 primaries.

Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for Trump's super PAC, said the group had raised a total of $120 million, including the $60 million transfer that is currently being repaid.

“This is old, recycled news about a refund request that was reported almost a year ago,” Mr. Pfeiffer said in a statement. “The fight to defeat Joe Biden is here, and the time for everyone to step up and join this fight is now. Every dollar raised by MAGA Inc. is raised will go directly to Joe Biden's defeat in November.”

For Mr. Trump, the refunds were necessary because his legal costs were mounting.

Mr. Trump faces four criminal charges in four different jurisdictions, with two trials tentatively scheduled for March. At least one of these two trials, and possibly both, will be postponed, but all cases require mountains of preparation by Trump's team of expensive lawyers.

Mr. Trump has been indicted by a grand jury in Georgia and by federal prosecutors in Washington in connection with his efforts to undermine his loss in the 2020 presidential election, which President Biden won. He has been charged by the Manhattan district attorney with falsifying company records related to a hush money payment to a porn star during the 2016 election. And he has been charged in connection with having piles of classified material in his club and home, which only open to members, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.

Mr. Trump had also paid some of the legal fees for aides ensnared as witnesses in the various cases. Walt Nauta, Trump's co-defendant in the documents case, is still on his campaign payroll. Another co-suspect in the case, Carlos De Oliveira, works at Mar-a-Lago.

To ease some of the financial burden, aides to Mr. Trump last year opened a legal defense fund to pay the legal fees of Trump allies involved in the various investigations. The fund, which raised $1.6 million from July to early December, is not intended for the former president himself.

Mr. Trump is also facing a financial tsunami from civil lawsuits against him.

On Friday, a federal civil jury ordered Trump to pay New York writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in a defamation lawsuit she filed against him. An earlier federal civil jury found that he sexually assaulted her decades ago and that he defamed her because he denied her allegations.

And in the coming days, the New York state judge overseeing a civil fraud trial against Mr. Trump and his company will decide how much fine Mr. Trump must pay in connection with the case. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who filed the lawsuit, asked the judge to award a $370 million fine.