WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s legendary ability to raise vast sums of political money may be on a collision course with a new and unpleasant reality.
Campaign finance reports released this week showed bright warning lights, showing that two key committees in his political operation had raised as much as $13.8 million in January, while collectively spending more than they took in. A major driver of those costs were millions of dollars in legal fees from Trump’s lawyers. numerous lawsuits.
The latest figures provide only a partial snapshot of the Trump operation’s finances, because other industries don’t have to report their numbers until April. But Trump’s diminished cash flow paints an alarming picture of him being the overwhelming favorite to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, especially among potential donors reluctant to subsidize Trump’s legal challenges.
Despite threats of revenge from Trump, some are instead backing his latest rival, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who outraised Trump’s main campaign committee by nearly $3 million last month.
In a statement, Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt did not directly discuss campaign finances.
“President Trump’s campaign is fueled by small dollar donors from across the country, from every background, who are fed up with record high inflation, wide open border invasion, crime and Crooked Joe Biden’s chaos,” Leavitt said. “The voters don’t want four more years of misery and destruction.”
When asked specifically about the numbers, a Trump spokesperson texted a link to a Fox News story published Tuesday that said Trump was expected to raise $6 million at a fundraiser held that day held.
Legal costs dominated Trump’s spending in January, accounting for $3.7 million of the roughly $15 million spent by the two committees. One of the committees, Save America, had nearly $2 million in unpaid legal debts, records show.
Save America was also supported with a cash infusion from a pro-Trump super PAC, which accounted for almost all the money it raised in January.
The committee received another $5 million “refund” payment from the super PAC “Make America Great Again Inc.”, which was initially seeded in the fall of 2022 through a $60 million from Save America. Instead, Trump campaign officials chose to raise that money. back in installments, a running total that has now reached $47 million, the data shows.
That left Trump’s two committees with $36.6 million in cash on hand, compared to Biden’s $132 million stash, for which he and the Democratic National Committee had raised $42 million in January.
“His endless drama and legal bills will exhaust the Republican Party and cause even more electoral losses,” Haley’s communications director, Nachama Soloveichik, said in a statement.
The latest round of legal bills comes at a sensitive time, as Trump orchestrates a takeover of the cash-strapped Republican National Committee, where he plans to appoint his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as the party’s No. 2 official. Some donors and RNC committee members fear Trump may also soon turn to the RNC to help cover his legal bills, as Trump has made claims of legal action a mainstay of his campaign.
“Every penny goes to the RNC’s No. 1 and only job. That is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States,” Lara Trump said during a recent interview on the conservative network NewsMax.
The RNC is facing headwinds of its own, reporting $8.7 million at the end of January, reports show.
What’s not clear is how much strain his massive legal spending will put on his finances, or those of the RNC.
While Trump’s financially stretched position is unusual for the likely favorite to win a major party’s nomination, there is plenty of time for a turnaround. It’s still early in the campaign and — assuming he becomes the nominee — he will be able to raise money in coordination with the RNC, allowing a single donor to write a check worth more than $1 million. That’s an advantage Biden and the DNC currently have over him.
Over the past year, he has also used pivotal moments in his ongoing legal drama, including his indictment hearings, to draw a flood of campaign cash from his large base of conservative supporters. Many chip small amounts online.
Trump approached the 2024 race with more than $100 million, much of it in the early days after his 2020 loss to Biden, when he bombarded his supporters with requests for an “election protection fund.”
His current money problems put him in a familiar, if unwelcome, position reminiscent of the 2020 presidential race, when he and his aides made a billion dollars and had a big cash advantage over Biden, with little to show . This time, legal fees have proven to be a major burden, costing more than $80 million over the past two years, the data shows.
The Democrats have responded cheerfully.
“It’s been a tough few weeks if you’re Donald Trump and you also love money,” said Ammar Moussa, spokesman for the Biden campaign. with the weakest operation in recent history.”