Rachel Maddow may have discovered the legal defense fund for Trump staffers caught up in the Russia probes

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday announced that her team appears to have found the legal defense fund for aides embroiled in probes surrounding President Donald Trump.

Discovered on the website for the Office of Government Ethics, the "Patriot Legal Defense Fund" was created on January 30 to "provide assistance paying legal expenses for persons involved in the investigations by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III," as well as the Senate and House intelligence committees "regarding Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and related matters."

In late November 2017, White House lawyer Ty Cobb announced the plan for the fund after it was revealed that the Trump campaign was paying the legal fees for the president and his eldest son. As the New York Times revealed earlier Thursday, that practice continues — a quarter of Trump's re-election donations are used to pay for legal representation.

Speaking to NBC News on November 22, 2017, Cobb said the fund would not cover the fees for "indictees or current targets" of the probe, which includes former Trump adviser Michael Flynn and campaign aide Rick Gates, the deputy to one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

As of press time, Maddow said she and her team do not know who the Patriot Legal Defense Fund will cover or where the money's coming from — only that the OGE, who admitted that they do not "approve or disapprove of specific legal defense funds," said its existence does not break any laws.

Watch below, via MSNBC: