Trump reelection campaign has spent $1.9m at president's companies, report says
Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has spent around $1.9m on the president’s private businesses, drawing ire from political observers who note his 2016 promise to self-fund his campaigns.
Mr Trump has so far spent none of his personal fortune on the race, and has instead overseen a major fundraising effort in conjunction with the Republican National Committee — with $154m raised during the final quarter of last year alone.
“This is a man, who when he first said he was going to run for office, was saying that he was going to do this all out of his own pocket,” Karl Sandstrom, a former commissioner for the Federal Election Commission (FEC), told Forbes. “And now he’s taking money from others and putting it in his pocket.”
The new report, based on FEC filings by the campaign, adds further concern surrounding whether the president is profiting personally from the presidency and the massive amounts of money that accompany a political brand like his.
According to Forbes, Trump Towers Commercial LLC has received the most cash from the campaign, with $1.3m from the effort going into the business, which Mr Trump owns 100 per cent.
The LLC has commercial office space in Mr Trump’s famed Trump Tower in New York City, which he called his official home until a recent switch to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The money spent by his campaign at Trump businesses doesn’t take into account taxpayer dollars that have flown into the president’s private properties, including rent money paid to the Florida resort, the New York skyscraper and other locations.
The government has not been transparent about the full extent of that spending, however: it has been reported that the Secret Service, for instance, has paid as much as $17,000 a month to rent a cottage at the president’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, where Mr Trump visits frequently during the summers, according to the Washington Post.
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