Trump spins legal woes into donation gold. Less left for GOP?

When Donald Trump flew to New York last week to face criminal charges, he was ready – and so was the MAGA merchandise. For $47, supporters could buy a white T-shirt printed with “Not Guilty” above a mug shot of the former president with the date of his April 4 arraignment.  

The mug shot was fake, as was Mr. Trump’s purported height on the wall chart, which added two inches to his 6’ 3” frame. But the indictment’s impact on the former president’s coffers has been undeniably real.  

His campaign said last week it had raised $12 million since the indictment was announced on March 30, a haul that was nearly as much as in the prior three months. Every day, supporters are bombarded with digital solicitations that claim Mr. Trump is the victim of a Democratic plot designed to stop him returning to the White House. “Our nation is becoming a Marxist Third World country,” says one, “that CRIMINALIZES dissent and IMPRISONS its political opposition.” 

By fundraising off his legal perils, Mr. Trump has already blurred the line between politics and the law. But the spiraling cost of preparing criminal defenses in multiple jurisdictions, from New York to Georgia, as well as potential federal cases, could yet test Mr. Trump’s unparalleled ability to tap his supporters for money. Should he prevail in the GOP presidential primary, his legal bills in 2024 could sow trouble for Republicans who saw his “Make America Great Again” candidates as a drag on midterm tickets and resented his parsimonious spending in battleground races. 

Now the party faces the prospect that their presidential frontrunner is fundraising largely to pay legal bills, while lesser-known candidates struggle in his wake to grab public attention and small-dollar donations. 

“The perception in the Republican Party for a couple of years is that Trump’s fundraising is a problem for other Republicans. He uses up a lot of small donors who might otherwise contribute to other Republicans,” says Robert Boatright, a political scientist at Clark University who studies campaign finance. 

Even before he pleaded not guilty in New York on felony charges related to the paying of hush money to a porn star during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump was racking up big legal bills. Before he declared his 2024 candidacy in November, the Republican National Committee was paying some of these bills. In the run-up to the midterms, Mr. Trump’s own political operations were spending more on lawyers than on GOP candidates, even as his solicitations urged supporters to help flip Congress to GOP hands. 

All of this precedes potential charges against Mr. Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, where he’s under investigation for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Separately, a federal special prosecutor is investigating his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters and the handling of classified documents found at his home in Florida. 

Donations to Mr. Trump’s main campaign fund are subject to federal restrictions on what counts as legitimate expenses. His leadership political action committee, however, has far more flexibility to direct money to lawyers and legal advisers, including in criminal cases unrelated to campaign operations. 

Supporters who buy T-shirts and contribute $100 to Mr. Trump may not know exactly how their money will be used, says Professor Boatright. He notes that the fine print states that 10% of donations go to the leadership PAC, but that this proportion is subject to change. 

Whether the gusher could eventually dry up is another matter. “His base is finite. That number is not growing. So raising and spending a lot of money this early in the campaign could cause him problems later on,” says Professor Boatright. 

What this means for other GOP candidates who need to build war chests for 2024 is unclear. While some Republicans complain that Mr. Trump’s incessant solicitations eclipse the rest of the field, there are also non-MAGA donors on the right who are anxious to move on. 

Mr. Trump’s fundraising off his indictment “is an impressive number,” says Dave Carney, a GOP strategist and fundraiser based in New Hampshire. But he’s not convinced that a dollar that goes to the former president is automatically a dollar less for other candidates. “Trump has all these small donors. Would they donate to other candidates or not? That’s an open question,” he says. 

Mr. Trump’s likely rivals for the GOP nomination, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, are busy raising money for PAC’s they don’t directly control. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has declared her candidacy, raised $11 million in the six weeks after she joined the race in February. 

How costly Mr. Trump’s legal bills could get during the 2024 election cycle is unknowable. Top-rated criminal defense attorneys can bill up to $2,000 an hour, say lawyers who work on complex cases, and Mr. Trump will need legal teams in each jurisdiction where he faces criminal cases, as well as a central legal team to advise on strategy and coordination. That suggests tens of millions of dollars could be consumed – money that would otherwise be available for campaign operations. 

An added wrinkle is Mr. Trump’s reputation as a prickly customer who has a history of not always paying his bills, including to his lawyers, says David Rossman, a professor of criminal law at Boston University. “He’s a difficult client who likes to think that he knows best,” he says. 

Last summer, Mr. Trump hired Chris Kise, Florida’s former solicitor general, to head up his defense in the classified documents case. Mr. Kise reportedly demanded a $3 million upfront fee that was paid by Mr. Trump’s leadership PAC. But within months, Mr. Kise had been sidelined amid apparent disagreement over how to handle the investigation. 

As a purported billionaire, Mr. Trump in theory has deep pockets to fund his own legal defense. But as a presidential candidate, he largely eschewed self-funding and sought to leverage his celebrity, while building a small-dollar fundraising juggernaut. The optics of that operation, funded by everyday Americans, paying his white-shoe lawyers in New York to file court motions, may have prompted a tweak to his solicitations. 

An email sent on Saturday started by telling supporters who are “doing poorly right now” to ignore his request for money. “Take care of yourself and your family – especially this Easter weekend! Some things always come FIRST,” it read.