Nothing about this president or presidency is normal. It still has the power to surprise and raise questions, though. Trump began his re-election campaign the day after he was sworn in (two years earlier than Obama, as it happens). This gave Donnie Two Scoops a mechanism to sweep in money and he does.
However for several months, the RNC paid Trump’s legal bills for the Russia investigation. When that raised eyebrows, the RNC switched to paying the rent for Trump’s 2020 campaign headquarters.
Soon after the Republican National Committee came under pressure for paying legal bills for President Donald Trumpand his eldest son in the special counsel's Russia probe, it started covering expenses for the president's re-election campaign. The RNC is using campaign funds to pay Trump's company more than $37,000 a month in rent, and to pay thousands of dollars in monthly salary to Vice President Mike Pence's nephew, John Pence, party officials confirmed this week. The rent pays for office space in the Trump Tower in New York for the staff of Trump's re-election campaign. John Pence is the Trump campaign's deputy executive director.
Campaign finance experts who spoke to CNBC said this type of spending by a party committee on behalf of a campaign is highly unusual but legal, and it appears the RNC disclosed it correctly "This is permissible and it's being reported properly, but why they are doing it is a mystery," said Brendan Fischer, senior counsel for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. "One would think the RNC could be spending their money more effectively right now on the 2018 campaign, rather than spending it to pay Trump's rent."
So far, the party has spent more than $290,000 to cover the Trump campaign's expenses since September, the first month it paid the Trump Tower rent or Pence's salary. Before then, both expenses had been paid directly by the Trump campaign. Then, in late September, the RNC abruptly began paying them both, and still does, according to financial disclosure forms released this week.
This has potential for trouble in the future, as there are limits to how much the RNC can spend on “coordinated” costs of campaigns.
This simply looks like payola. Does Trump hold so much dirt on other Republicans that they need to pay him to keep his mouth shut? Or should I say, do the Russians have that much dirt? What is going on here?
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Update: some folks say this is not surprising; the RNC is just paying for legal expenses. The usual way to pay for those is through a legal defense fund. Doing it this way takes campaigning money out of the RNC and limits their future ability to coordinate with Trump, should he run again.