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Reports that Donald Trump's legal team spent a fraction of the amount they raised to fight his legal battles raise "red flags," Mary Trump has said.
In a post on her Substack blog, the former president's estranged niece and frequent critic responded to a Daily Beast story alleging that new tax filings show Trump's legal defense fund spent less than $30,000 of the $1.6 million it raised in the last six months, with none of the money going towards legal cases.
Trump is facing four criminal indictments and a total of 91 felony charges—two cases involving alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, one regarding the alleged mishandling of classified documents that he retained when he left the White House, and one regarding hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has denied any wrongdoing in all of his cases.
Trump's campaign officials created the Patriot Legal Defense Fund in July to raise money for his defense. In its first financial report, submitted to the Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday, PLDF reported spending just $28,578 over the last six months, including a payment of $18,136 to Trump's Mar-a-Lago club for "banquet hall" fees in late November and a consultancy payment of $2,500 to Trump political adviser Michael Glassner, who runs the fund, paid through his public affairs firm C&M Transcontinental.
Newsweek reached out to the PLDF, the IRS, and representatives for Trump and Glassner via email for comment.
The fund then published new financial statements that claimed the fund had neither raised nor spent any money. A PLDF representative told The Daily Beast that the original filing was "incomplete," saying, "It's now being updated and will be refiled prior to the January deadline."
Mary Trump said she shared the story with the attorney Joe Gallina. "He saw immediate red flags," she wrote.
Gallina told her: "Non-profits like the Patriot Legal Defense Fund have a fiduciary duty to their donors to use their resources for their stated purpose. This is a fundamental principle of non-profit law. If a non-profit misuses funds, it is FRAUD."
"The truth is out," Mary Trump wrote. "Attorneys have seen the records of the fund's expenses. Donald and his organizations are already hemorrhaging money in order to cover their legal bills. The possibility that this latest in a long line of Donald's grifts gets SHUT DOWN puts him in even greater danger of financial devastation. Sad."
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About the writer
Kate Plummer is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. politics and national affairs, and ... Read more