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Tags: maga | deep | state
OPINION

Money Invested to Save Trump Well Spent

donald trump lawyers

Attorneys for former U.S. President Donald Trump Todd Blanche (R) and John Lauro (L) arrive at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Court House August 11, 2023 in Washington, D.C. Blanche and Lauro attended the first hearing held by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on a protective order related to disclosure of government evidence in the case against Trump. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Larry Bell By Monday, 14 August 2023 12:41 PM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

Democrats are bound and determined to bury their leading political adversary, Donald Trump, in debt through publicly funded lawsuits to redirect money, media attention, and surging momentum away from his 2024 election campaign.

John Lauro, a Trump attorney, said on Fox News within minutes of a third indictment being made public, that the former president is "being forced to spend money on legal defense, which should be spent on the discussion of critical ideas and critical issues."

Recent financial reports gleefully released by a gloating New York Times analysis of federal records show that about 30 cents of every dollar raised by Trump’s various political committees and super PAC this year have been spent on legal-related costs.

Save America, the PAC covering the bulk of legal spending, has nearly been bled dry, having plunged $16 million into these expenses since the 2020 election.

Save America asked for a refund on the $60 million it had transferred last year to the super PAC, Make America Great Again (MAGA) Inc., that was expected to chiefly pay for television ads. Of that money $12.25 million that has been returned has gone into the account that mostly covers legal bills.

The Times reports that Trump has begun redirecting more of every dollar raised into that same account.

Of about $67.2 million raised in new donations over the past six months, the Trump campaign spent approximately $90 million.

According to the Times analysis, 40% of every dollar raised online in the first six months of 2023 arrived during the two one-week periods around his first two indictments, peaking at nearly four million dollars the day of his first arraignment.

All of this totals more than $27 million in legal fees and other investigation- related expenses over the past six months, costs required to pay at least eight law firms more than $1million each in the first half of 2023.

This number of defense firms and research consultants — along with the burn rate of legal spending - will rapidly escalate with the most recent two DOJ indictments ramping up, and at least two more expected to follow.

Many of those lawyers typically charge between $1,500 and $2,000 per hour, with periods during trials with teams working 16-hour days.

Each case in federal court can run up to several millions of dollars in fees, while unlimited public coffers cover prosecution expenses.

On top of that, campaign events can cost more than $300,000.

Seemingly endless legal suits also demand a great deal of time and attention that interferes with campaign planning and orchestration.

Criminal cases will likely require the former president to personally travel and appear in multiple court jurisdictions.

Proscecutors in the Trump election interference charges are pushing presiding U.S. district judge Tanya Chutkan to commence pre-trial hearings on Jan. 2, 2024, a schedule that CNN legal commentator Elie Hinig has described as "extraordinarily aggressive," with less than five months for the defense team to sift through potentially hundreds of thousands of pages of documents based on a schedule for jury selection in December, before the holiday season.

Trump’s response posted on his Truth Social network blasted lead prosecutor Jack Smith’s proposal as "deranged," stating "Only an out of touch lunatic would ask for such a date, one day into the New Year, and maximum Election interference with [the GOP caucus in] Iowa!

In addition, Trump’s 2024 calendar is already filling up with other court dates: a March trial in Manhattan for allegedly paying hush money to porn actress "Stormy Daniels," a Florida trial set for May regarding retention of classified documents, plus likely new election interference indictments to be filed in Georgia.

Any good news in this it is that the strategy to bleed Donald Trump’s campaign and personal finances dry with transparently political legal charges energizes his online donor support at a rate that dwarfs all rivals: nearly $46 million in the first half of the year, with an average donation of under $35.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung accused President Biden and the Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith, of using the government’s "unlimited resources" to try "to force the Trump campaign to spend, spend, spend to defend innocent Americans who have been targeted."

Nevertheless, Cheung added, "As President Trump has said, he will spend whatever it takes to defeat the Deep State and Crooked Joe Biden."

I’ll add that whatever this cost, it will be money well spent.

(Related articles may be found here, and here.) 

Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.

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LarryBell
Recent financial reports gleefully released by a gloating New York Times analysis of federal records show that about 30 cents of every dollar raised by Trump’s various political committees and super PAC this year have been spent on legal-related costs.
maga, deep, state
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2023-41-14
Monday, 14 August 2023 12:41 PM
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