Trump's 'huge' legal spending from his PAC often had 'nothing to do with politics': NYT reporter
New reporting this week from The New York Timesrevealed that former President Donald Trump's political action committee used around $10 million to cover legal expenses for the former president.
Speaking to CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday, Times reported Maggie Haberman highlighted the implications of this expense — starting with the fact that much of it doesn't have any direct relevance to his actual run for president in 2024.
"You've been digging into federal election filings," said Blitzer. "What are you learning about how much money Trump's political action committee actually spent on legal bills last year?"
"So the political action committee, over the two years in which it was formed — it was formed at the very end of 2020 — spent overall more than $16 million on legal fees," said Haberman. "Roughly $10 million of that, some increase over that number but not a huge amount, went directly to Trump's legal fees. For the most part, these were legal fees in cases that had nothing to do with politics. The investigation in Manhattan into the Trump Organization, representation there. It was the representation defending him in the Justice Department investigation that's ongoing into his possession of hundreds of classified documents. And the list goes on. It is a huge constellation of lawyers."
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There are three basic reasons why this level of legal spending is so significant, Haberman continued.
"One is sheer volume," she said. "[Two] is that Trump is notorious for not paying lawyers on his own. And the third issue, there is unsettled debate over now that he's a candidate, can he still use that PAC money to pay his own legal fees?"
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