Fundraising at a key super PAC associated with former President Donald Trump has almost entirely stopped, according to newly available campaign finance data filed with federal authorities.
At the Make America Great Again, Again! (how long did they spend on that name?) fundraising and campaigning organization, just $40 in donor money was reported for August. In July, the organization raised $351,000 from Trump’s donors nationwide — although the June total was actually zero. In other words, the decline has unfolded over the course of recent months. In May, the PAC raised $774,244, all of which was from donors who either gave more than $200 at one time or passed that level over the course of all their donations for a particular election cycle. The $40 that the committee reported in August fundraising was in unitemized donations, meaning the money wasn’t in that category. Over the course of the unfolding calendar year, the committee is reporting a deficit of over $4,900 in the unitemized donations category. Overall, it reported raising $5,561,854 from donors since the year began.
At the end of August, the PAC still reported a lot in cash on hand, meaning available money: $10,223,824, and the committee said it spent nearly $394,000 over the course of the month, none of which apparently went towards supporting any of the Republican candidates Trump has vociferously touted during the midterm elections. There weren’t any direct contributions to any federal candidates in May, either, when fundraising at the PAC was significantly higher. Elsewhere in the Trump campaign apparatus, which is comprised of numerous individual organizations, millions of dollars are going towards legal fees. In August, the Save America PAC dished out $3.8 million for legal fees, which — as one might expect — is the highest single-month total on legal costs spent by the PAC during this entire election cycle. Most of the August spending went towards a West Palm Beach firm. That PAC is a kind of fundraising organization known as a leadership PAC, and there are relatively broad allowances for how money at such an organization can be spent.
Financial Times identifies a total of seven PACs connected to Trump, which reported a collective total of about $122 million in available cash at the close of August. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates continue posting impressive fundraising numbers. As of a recent point, all three of the candidates with the highest fundraising totals in the 2022 election cycle were Democrats running for U.S. Senate: Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, Arizona’s Mark Kelly, and Florida’s Val Demings. Trump, meanwhile, will no doubt be spending a lot more on legal fees from some source in the near future, considering the new announcement by New York Attorney General Letitia James of a massive civil lawsuit alleging a years-long pattern of financial misconduct at the Trump family business. The misconduct, as alleged, centered on false statements of value for upwards of nearly two dozen assets associated with the Trump brand: deceptive valuations that were set to provide the Trump firm with various unearned financial benefits.
