On the night of this spring’s Florida primary, the pastor giving the invocation at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago victory party prayed: “Lord, give Mr. Trump the power to rise above the GOP establishment.”
Turns out the prayer worked. Not only did Trump win the Republican presidential nomination, but two months later, on May 18, Trump signed a deal with the Republican National Committee giving him access to a top-notch fundraising operation after not having had one at all through the primaries. That same day, Trump’s campaign, now set to receive tens of millions of dollars of other people’s money, finally sent five- and six-figure checks to Trump’s properties for events that had happened months earlier. Meaning that the GOP establishment had not only been defeated, it was now actually paying for that March 15 victory party attended primarily by members of Trump’s Palm Beach country club...
What’s more, the two-month delay in reporting those expenses may have violated Federal Election Commission rules, which require an expense to be disclosed in the same reporting period ― in
Trump’s case, in the same month ― as it was incurred, said a campaign finance law expert.
“It doesn’t look right, even if it is legal,” said Paul S. Ryan from the Campaign Legal Center watchdog group. He called Trump’s heavy spending on his own properties “unprecedented” and said the timing of the payments is curious. “Any way you slice it, this level of self-dealing looks bad,” he said. “It looks like a candidate who is pocketing donors’ money.”
It is the new prominence of donors’ money that casts Trump’s campaign spending in a radically different light since the signing of that joint fundraising agreement in May. Even as Trump has skimped on traditional expenses like campaign staff or advertising, he has spent campaign money lavishly on his own businesses. During the primaries, Trump paid about three-quarters of his campaign expenses out of his own pocket, with much of the rest coming from the sale of hats and other campaign merchandise. But since the Republican Party turned over its fundraising operation to him, Trump’s own contributions to his campaign have fallen off while money from donors, both large and small, has accounted for the bulk of what is spent.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-rnc-self-dealing_us_57cdcba0e4b078581f13b262
Turns out the prayer worked. Not only did Trump win the Republican presidential nomination, but two months later, on May 18, Trump signed a deal with the Republican National Committee giving him access to a top-notch fundraising operation after not having had one at all through the primaries. That same day, Trump’s campaign, now set to receive tens of millions of dollars of other people’s money, finally sent five- and six-figure checks to Trump’s properties for events that had happened months earlier. Meaning that the GOP establishment had not only been defeated, it was now actually paying for that March 15 victory party attended primarily by members of Trump’s Palm Beach country club...
What’s more, the two-month delay in reporting those expenses may have violated Federal Election Commission rules, which require an expense to be disclosed in the same reporting period ― in
Trump’s case, in the same month ― as it was incurred, said a campaign finance law expert.
“It doesn’t look right, even if it is legal,” said Paul S. Ryan from the Campaign Legal Center watchdog group. He called Trump’s heavy spending on his own properties “unprecedented” and said the timing of the payments is curious. “Any way you slice it, this level of self-dealing looks bad,” he said. “It looks like a candidate who is pocketing donors’ money.”
It is the new prominence of donors’ money that casts Trump’s campaign spending in a radically different light since the signing of that joint fundraising agreement in May. Even as Trump has skimped on traditional expenses like campaign staff or advertising, he has spent campaign money lavishly on his own businesses. During the primaries, Trump paid about three-quarters of his campaign expenses out of his own pocket, with much of the rest coming from the sale of hats and other campaign merchandise. But since the Republican Party turned over its fundraising operation to him, Trump’s own contributions to his campaign have fallen off while money from donors, both large and small, has accounted for the bulk of what is spent.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-rnc-self-dealing_us_57cdcba0e4b078581f13b262
