The
release of campaign financial filings revealed a curious fact about Donald
Trump. He may end up enriching
himself, his family, and his
far-flung enterprises by running for president.
The New York Times reported the
story with an air of amazement at Trump’s brazen self-dealing. This is no
ordinary campaign.
“Donald J. Trump regularly boasts that he is self-funding his presidential bid, but new campaign finance filings show that he is also shifting plenty of money back to himself in the process.
According to documents submitted to the Federal Election Commission, Mr. Trump, whose campaign has just $1.3 million cash on hand, paid at least $1.1 million to his businesses and family members in May for expenses associated with events and travel costs. The total represents nearly a fifth of the $6 million that his campaign spent in the month.
The spending raised eyebrows among campaign finance experts and some of Mr. Trump’s critics who have questioned whether the presumptive Republican nominee, who points to his business acumen as a case for his candidacy, is trying to do what he has suggested he would in 2000 when he mulled making an independent run: “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”
He
could end up turning a profit if he repaid himself for the campaign loans,”
said Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance expert with the Campaign Legal Center.
“He could get all his money back plus the profit margin for what his campaign
has paid himself for goods and services.”
While
most candidates list an array of vendors providing goods and services on their
filings, Mr. Trump’s is packed with payments to his various clubs and
buildings, his fleet of planes and his family.
The self-proclaimed billionaire
is required by law to account for his spending this way to prevent his
companies from making illegal corporate donations to his campaign. In 2015,
about $2.7 million was paid to at least seven companies Mr. Trump owns or to
people who work for his real estate and branding empire, repaying them for
services provided to his campaign.
In
May, the biggest-ticket item was Mr. Trump’s use of the Mar-a-Lago Club, his
Florida resort, which was paid $423,000. The campaign paid $350,000 to TAG Air
for his private airplanes, $125,000 to Trump Restaurants and more than $170,000
to Trump Tower, the Manhattan skyscraper that houses the campaign’s
headquarters.
Another
article reviewed the same reports:
Timothy
P. Carney writes in the “Washington
Examiner” that Trump’s campaign is
looking more and more like a grand con game designed to enrich Donald Trump.
Carney
writes:
Donald
Trump is a con man, and if you support him for president, you are his latest
mark.
Commentators
have been warning voters of this obvious scam for months. Trump’s latest
campaign filing makes it clear. The man is unwilling or unable to do what it
takes to win a general election, and a huge portion of the money he does raise
flows straight into the companies he owns.
Carney
learned from Trump’s required campaign disclosures that a surprising amount of
the money spent by the campaign has gone to Trump businesses.
Trump’s
campaign spent $6.7 million in May — more than it raised. And a lot of that
money was spent on, well, Donald Trump.
As
the Huffington Post’s Christina Wilkie reported, Trump’s
campaign spent more than $1 million of that money on Trump companies’ products
and services last month, “for facilities rental, catering, monthly rents and
utilities at more than a half-dozen Trump-owned companies and properties.” The
amount “includes nearly $350,000 that the Trump campaign paid a Trump-owned
company, TAG Air, for the use of Trump’s private jets and helicopters.”
The
Associated Press found that Trump’s campaign has spent $6 million since it
began at Trump businesses….
A
final detail: Trump’s campaign is $45.7 million in debt (which, you may note,
is a lot more than its $1.3 million cash on hand). And all of that debt is owed
to … Donald J. Trump.
That
means that every penny of the next $45.7 million in donations to the Trump
campaign could literally go directly to Trump’s personal bank accounts before
this is all over.
Trump
has said he’s funding his own campaign. If he were really doing that, he would
forgive his campaign’s debt to Trump, thus freeing up future campaign
contributions for the actual campaign. But does that seem like something Trump
would do?
Well,
actually, yes. Big Republican donors have class send their wallets for fear
that their gifts would go to repay Trump personally. Yesterday Trump announced
that he would not require the campaign to repay the $50 million that he loaned
it. This might open some of those pockets.