Trump, His Acolytes Plus Foreign Regimes Have Funneled Millions In Shady Spending Into His Pockets

Trump owns a majority-share of Trump Media (59%) and the lock-up period, in which he wasn’t allowed to sell his shares is about to end, opening a flood-gate of much-needed cash for him… although not as much of a flood as he had expected. Last week, CNBC reported that even as the stock market has soared, Trump Media stock has plummeted. Last week it hit an all-time low, sinking below $20/share for the first time. [It closed at $19.38 on Friday.] “Even after losing much of its value, Trump’s stake at Wednesday’s stock price is still worth more than $2.2 billion— more than half of his on-paper net worth, according to Forbes… Trump has given no indication that he plans to cash out once he is able to do so [September 20]. But speculation has flared that he might, especially as Trump Media’s latest earnings reports show it losing millions of dollars and generating little revenue.”

Last month, CNN reported that, once again, Trump’s businesses are raking in millions of dollars from Republican political campaigns— including his own. The most transaction politician in American history, Trump has had no problem cutting deals with wealthy Republicans— and wealthy foreign despots— to enrich himself and his corrupt family. Republican candidates he endorses, from all over the country, spend immense amounts of money at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties. 

“With glitzy Mar-a-Lago fundraisers, stays at Trump’s hotels, and flights on the former president’s private jet,” wrote a trio of CNN reporters, “Republican candidates and political groups are on track to spend more on Trump’s businesses this year than any year since 2016… Trump himself has been the biggest spender, both this year and over the last decade. Between his three presidential campaigns, Trump and associated political groups have funneled more than $28 million in campaign donations to his businesses— helping convert the enthusiasm of his political supporters into personal profit. Other Republicans have followed suit, spending millions at Trump’s properties in an apparent attempt to curry favor with the former president and signal their allegiance to him to GOP voters. Some of the candidates who’ve spent the most money on Trump businesses in recent years have been new politicians who won the former president’s endorsement despite a lack of past electoral experience or success, including [Benny] Moreno, former Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker and Arizona Senate hopeful Kari Lake.”

The dynamic of candidates shelling out thousands on Trump’s businesses while vying for his endorsement— which can make or break Republican campaigns— is an example of how politics has boosted his businesses’ bottom line. And the former president’s influence helps explain why some candidates are traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to show up at a Trump hotel or resort, campaign finance experts said.

“He’s clearly now in complete control of the Republican Party,” said Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program. “Patronizing his businesses has become one of the accepted ways that candidates and public officials express their loyalty to the party’s leader.”

…Moreno, the Ohio Senate candidate, is a clear example. A businessman who owns a host of car dealerships in the Cleveland area, Moreno originally ran for Senate in 2022, before dropping out after a conversation with Trump and eventually supporting now-vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance.

In April 2023, as Moreno prepared to run for the Senate again, he reported two payments at Mar-a-Lago totaling about $13,000 for “event catering.” The same day one of those payments was made, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had heard Moreno, who he called a “highly respected businessman,” was “thinking of running for the Senate,” and that he “would not be easy to be beat.” Moreno posted a screenshot of the missive on Twitter with a “Thank you sir!” and announced his campaign days later.

Trump endorsed Moreno on December 19. On December 21, Moreno reported spending nearly $17,000 more at Mar-a-Lago. He spent another $80,000 there in January, when his campaign held a fundraiser at the resort that raised about $350,000 in donations. At the event, Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., declared that “God has chosen” Moreno, and called him “an unbelievable patriot who has achieved so much,” social media video shows.

Moreno won a competitive primary election in March, defeating the sitting Republican secretary of state and a state legislator. Before the Trump endorsement, it was a close race, said David Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Akron.

“The Trump endorsement meant everything,” Cohen said. “It was the whole ball game.”

… [Beyond Herschel Walker and Kari Lake] Several of the other federal candidates who spent the most at Mar-a-Lago over the last decade were right-wing congressional hopefuls who won Trump’s endorsement but lost at the ballot box in 2022: J.R. Majewski of Ohio, John Gibbs of Michigan and Vernon Jones of Georgia.

…“It’s problematic if he’s giving endorsements because of people spending money at his properties,” said Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “We don’t know whether he’s doing that because he has an agreement— an explicit quid pro quo— or he’s just been influenced to give an endorsement because of their spending money.”

…Since his first bid for president, Trump’s principal campaign committee and associated PACs and Super PACs have spent more than $28 million on his businesses.

But while political spending at Mar-a-Lago has attracted the most attention, the bulk of Trump’s campaign payments to his own businesses has gone to a lower-profile firm. His campaign and associated committees have spent more than $14 million on air travel from TAG Air, Inc., which operates Trump’s Boeing 757 jet— nicknamed “Trump Force One”— and other aircraft.

Trump’s latest financial disclosure statement, which was released last week, show that he owns TAG Air through another LLC and a trust. The company is listed as being worth between $5 million and $25 million, and Trump reported earning $4.4 million in income from it. He also reported earning $56.9 million from Mar-a-Lago.

So far, about 5 percent of the total disbursements from Trump’s 2024 campaign committee have gone to his own businesses. That’s a larger percentage than for his 2016 or 2020 campaign committees— although that may be in part because overall campaign spending will ramp up ahead of the election.

It’s not illegal for candidates to spend campaign funds at their own businesses, provided that the businesses are charging them a fair market rate, said Weiner, the Brennan Center expert. But he noted that donors may not realize some of their contributions are indirectly going into Trump’s pockets.

“They want to help his ticket win, and they want to express their support,” Weiner said. “To the extent that a campaign is used in part to prop up his businesses— that’s a concern.”

Beyond PACs associated with Trump’s campaign, some other GOP groups are spending less than they were in past election cycles. The Republican National Committee spent a total of more than $2 million at Trump hotels and resorts between 2016 and 2022. But it didn’t report any spending in 2023, and only a single $115.54 payment to “Trump Hotels” so far this year— despite concerns among some that Lara Trump could try to direct money to her father-in-law’s companies after her elevation to RNC co-chair in March.

Similarly, the Senate Leadership Fund and the National Republican Congressional Committee spent tens of thousands of dollars at Trump properties in past election cycles but haven’t reported any spending there since 2020.

The campaign spending at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties parallels other business ventures Trump has been involved in since he left the White House to earn money from his political supporters— including selling digital trading cards, promoting Trump-branded sneakers and hawking a $59.99 Bible.

This morning, Casey Michel, Director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation went to the next level for New York Magazine readers— Trump’s sketchy self-enrichment dealings abroad. “Given the financial overlap between Trump, his family, his company, and a constellation of kleptocratic regimes, especially Russia, Trump presented an unprecedented opportunity for foreign regimes to directly access the White House and tilt American policy in the process. Now, with Trump running for the presidency once more, those concerns have hardly disappeared. If anything, foreign governments— including brand-new regimes that weren’t involved in Trump’s first whirlwind in the White House— have only spied new opportunities to burrow into his pockets and into a second administration… Even after Trump left the Oval Office, the revelations about his subterranean financial links as president with foreign regimes continued spilling out; it was only this year, for instance, that congressional investigators revealed that the first two years of Trump’s presidency included countries as far afield as Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey, and many more patronizing Trump businesses. Any of these details on their own would be exceptional— can you imagine how much any other presidential candidate’s secret Chinese bank account would dominate a news cycle?— but they’ve been subsumed in the broader morass of Trump’s scandals. They’ve become, to an almost shocking degree, normalized.”

Corrupt regimes and businesses in Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Panama, Oman, Serbia, have bankrolled— as in bribed— Trump for years. “A bombshell exposé in the Washington Post revealed that the military dictatorship in Egypt may have secretly funneled some $10 million into Trump’s flagging 2016 campaign, without the American public having any idea. The Post’s details had all the makings for a scandal of historic proportions: The Egyptian security services suddenly pulling $10 million in cash from an Egyptian bank; classified intel indicating that Egypt’s ruling despot wanted to funnel $10 million to Trump; Trump himself announcing a surprise injection of $10 million into his campaign, tapping what he claimed was his own money. There was so much smoke you could choke on it. And yet, after Trump became president, his administration eventually dropped the investigation into the Egypt-to-Trump pipeline wholesale— and Americans never learned where that Egyptian money may have ended up, or what effect that might have had on Trump’s policies. Americans are still, to this day, in the dark about the links between Trump and Egypt. That’s just one investigation, and one financial link, among dozens and dozens more, some of which we still know next to nothing about. But if past is precedent, that may simply be a taste of what’s to come— and what is at stake, for both dictators and democracy alike.”