Broke? Trump is using campaign donations & RNC funds to pay legal bills from Russia investigation!

[kpete]

Rich people are cheap. I have had some limited time with rich people, and holy hell are they are cheap (#notallrichpeople). But the Trump grift can only be understood by acknowledging that Trump is broke. Not precisely, of course, but broke in the sense that he lives paycheck to paycheck and at the mercy of creditors like most of the rest of us if at a grander if short-fingered scale.

President Donald Trump is using money donated to his reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee to pay for his lawyers in the probe of alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The U.S. Federal Election Commission allows the use of private campaign funds to pay legal bills arising from being a candidate or elected official.

While previous presidential campaigns have used these funds to pay for routine legal matters such as ballot access disputes and compliance requirements, Trump would be the first U.S. president in the modern campaign finance era to use such funds to cover the costs of responding to a criminal probe, said election law experts.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

More:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/19/trump-using-campaign-rnc-funds-to-pay-russia-probe-legal-bills-reuters-citing-sources.html
via:
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/09/trump-is-broke.html

[GusBob]

1. What about the money from the inaugeration? Is that legal to use?

There was a story about it has not been accounted for, the 100 million

[Brother Buzz]

7. That money is real slippery

Inauguration funds are private money. There are few limits on how leftover money can be used, and it looks like it has being quietly diverted.

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-inaugural-funds-charity-2017-9

[blogslut]

2. Also cheap

[Xipe Totec]

3. Doesn't civil asset forfeiture apply to these funds? nt

[underpants]

4. "That's none of your business."

Uh, yes it is.

[Gothmog]

5. The RNC may go broke paying trump's legal fees

[tanyev]

8. That'd be a real shame.

[Dustlawyer]

12. He would still have the Chamber of Commerce, right?

Koch's maybe?

[dembotoz]

6. The dumb Republican will always donate more

His bigly hands never pick up the tab if they don't need to

[iluvtennis]

9. Just shameful. This can't be legal??

[cstanleytech]

10. He should not be broke considering how much money the government has been paying him

via the secret service unless of course he was already broke and his whole empire is one giant Ponzi scheme.

[Freethinker65]

11. Trump got away with misusing charitable foundation $$ to pay for lawsuits before

Why the hell would he stop now? I am actually surprised he is not using taxpayer funds (that otherwise go to projects in states where he lost the popular vote) to pay for his defense while skimming some $$$ off the top by requiring those working on his defense to work from Trump held properties, wear Trump branded clothes, and employ Barron Trump as a paid intern at a professional salary.

[Honeycombe8]

13. He's not broke. He MAKES money by spending "OTM." Other People's Money:

Donald Trump, in hot water over a report that his charity used donations to cover business-related legal fees, told a campaign rally crowd on Tuesday that “there’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money.”

The comment about “other people’s money” came during a campaign rally in North Carolina, where Trump pledged to keep refugees from the Middle East out of the U.S. and instead put them in “safe zones” that would be built with money from Gulf nations. It is a financial maneuver the real estate mogul said he has performed many times throughout his career.


“It’s called OPM. I do that all the time in business. It’s called other people’s money. There’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money,” Trump said.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/donald-trump-other-peoples-money-228434

[L. Coyote]

14. Isn't that a violation of the law?

Oh wait, they don't obey those laws anyway.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/341922-watchdogs-to-doj-trump-jr-meeting-broke-campaign-finance-laws

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

15. Yes, cheapness and greed,one side of the coin than the other.

Cheapness and greed



Donald Trump spent election night pitching Trump products

[Mr. Evil]

16. Sometimes you have to wonder

if this is just a bad dream, even a nightmare, if you will, hoping to soon awaken and we're no longer held hostage by the scumbag-in-chief.