Over the last few weeks, Donald Trump has lost two major cases to the tune of more than $500 million with taxes and penalties.
Supporters of Trump decided to open a GoFundMe page to help him pay off those settlements, which immediately brought about outrage from the left, but their outrage has been brushed aside.
Talking Points…
- Trump loses massive civil suits
- GoFundMe responds to outrage
- Analysis
After these last two rulings were handed down, Donald Trump had to be beside himself. Trump lost the defamation suit author E. Jean Carroll brought, and he now has to pay her more than $80 million. Then, he lost the New York fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. That will cost him more than $400 million once taxes and penalties are included.
Trump has options here, but he needs to explore them rather quickly. Taking the E. Jean Carroll case out of the equation, Trump only had 30 days from the day of the ruling to pay the New York fine if he wanted to appeal the case. So, he has the option of paying the full amount out of pocket, which is unlikely or taking out a bond. Trump may be a billionaire, but most of his money is tied up in real estate.
His second option is to take out a bond, as noted above, but he will have to put up about $50 million in order to do that, and, according to legal expert Jonathan Turley, win or lose, Trump will lose that cash, so he is going to take a massive hit to his cashflow either way.
Say what you want about MAGA, but they are fiercely loyal to Trump, so much so that his supporters are willing to depart with their money to help the billionaire businessman pay his legal bills. Mind you, Trump has already been using RNC, campaign, and PAC funds to pay his legal bills, but he will likely not be able to use them for these settlements unless he pulls off some rather creative accounting.
To that point, his supporters started a GoFundMe page, which his detractors immediately tried to have disabled. As of Friday morning, the “Stand with Trump” GoFundMe account had broken $1 million, closer to having $1.1 million at the time of this writing. So far, more than 19,000 people have donated, with the largest donor being $10,000.
Since the account went live, the left has had a meltdown of sorts, but GoFundMe Director of Public Affairs, Jalen Drummond, a former White House staffer under Trump, says there is nothing wrong with this fundraiser, and it will not be taken down. He stated:
“This fundraiser is currently within our terms of service.”
Additionally, Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission and current manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, confirmed that everything appears to be above board on this fundraiser, stating:
“This GoFundMe campaign can’t be considered campaign contributions to Donald Trump because it’s paying legal expenses that would exist irrespective of the campaign. Remember all the prosecutors in these cases are saying, ‘Oh, these cases have absolutely nothing to do with his candidacy,’ right?
“If they used it for some kind of campaign expense, yeah, that would be a problem. But if they stick to just paying these legal costs, I don’t see a problem.”
To me, the optics of this are bad for Trump. If I were him, I would announce that I was grateful for the effort, but please keep your money to fend off the high inflation that Joe Biden brought on. That could make this a huge win for Trump, but I don’t expect him to decline the money.
Trump is getting crushed right now, and both his campaign and the RNC are cash-strapped, with roughly 25% of what Biden has in his war chest right now, and the bills have really not even started to come for his attorneys. Once these federal cases go to trial, Trump will run up an eight-figure legal bill, all of which has been coming from campaign funds.
According to the latest Forbes report, Trump has a net worth of about $2.6 billion, with more than $640 million in liquid assets. The point is that if he pays this fine out of pocket, his personal flow will be as strapped as his campaign and the RNC.
