Trump’s deal with RNC prioritizes PAC to pay its lawyers
Former President Donald J. Trump’s new shared fundraising deal with the Republican National Committee directs some of the donations to the political account he has used to pay his legal bills before any money goes to the party itself.
The order in which entities will receive money from major donors through what is known as the Trump 47 Committee was disclosed in the fine print of an invitation to a major dinner next month in Palm Beach, Florida, where top donors will be asked to contribute. up to $814,600 per person to participate.
The invitation shows that the first $6,600 donated will go to Trump’s campaign. The next $5,000 will go to his Save America PAC, which has paid more than $50 million in legal and investigative bills for Mr. Trump through 2023. The $5,000 amount is the maximum amount that can be contributed by an individual to Save America under federal rules. .
Then the RNC gets the next $413,000, followed by dozens of state parties.
In practice, this means that even modestly large donors — anything above $6,600 — will fund the bill that Mr. Trump used to cover legal costs. And the fundraising deal came as Save America, which has averaged about $5 million a month in legal payments for Mr. Trump and witnesses in his cases, is on track to run out of money by the end of the spring to have.
The prioritization of Trump’s Save America PAC ahead of the Republican National Committee was first reported by The Associated Press.
The new fundraising deal comes shortly after Trump functionally took over the RNC as the presumptive Republican nominee. He pushed for installing a new chairman, Michael Whatley, and appointing his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair.
One of Trump’s two co-campaign managers, Chris LaCivita, has pushed through mass layoffs amid a top-to-bottom restructuring.
Trump starts the general election ahead of President Biden in the polls, but behind him in campaign money. Mr. Biden and his joint activities with the party reported $155 million in cash at the end of February. Trump’s campaign said it had $42 million in its accounts, while the RNC reported another $11.3 million.
The invitation to the April 6 dinner, which The New York Times previously reported was expected to raise $25 million, included a number of well-known names listed as co-chairs. Those people included Robert Bigelow, a former top supporter of Ron DeSantis who gave Trump’s super PAC $5 million in February; Kelly Loeffler, the former senator from Georgia; Linda McMahon, a former Trump Cabinet official and major Trump donor; and Rebekah Mercer, who was a key Trump backer in 2016.
The nature of such a dinner for mega donors is that most of the money still goes to the party. But for a smaller event with, say, a $25,000 prize to attend, a much larger portion of the deal would go to Trump’s PAC.
Trump officials have done that angrily pushed back to suggestions that the RNC will pay for Mr. Trump’s personal legal fees. The new arrangement allows Trump to tap money from larger donors for his legal affairs, without the money ever passing through the RNC
These joint fundraising deals are standard in presidential politics. Mr. Biden has one at the Democratic National Committee and state parties that allow him to raise money in similarly large increments.
What is unusual in Mr. Trump’s case is that the nominee included a PAC in the agreement used to fund legal fees. Save America ended February with $4 million in the bank and about $500,000 in debt. Last month, the company spent $7.2 million, of which nearly $5.6 million was labeled as legal fees and $400,000 was transferred to another account that also paid legal bills.
Mr. Trump already sends 10 percent of every dollar he raises online to his PAC, a share he raised from 1 percent early in his presidential campaign.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately return a request for comment.