We long ago eliminated any meaningful controls on political contributions in American elections. Now we should focus on the rules governing political spending, which are in equally terrible shape. The Trump campaign and the federal government’s weak enforcement efforts are to blame.
Anyone who has read through Donald Trump’s campaign spending reports quickly comes to the conclusion that they are a political nightmare. There is so little disclosure about what happened to the billions raised in 2020 and 2024 that donors (and perhaps even the former president himself) cannot possibly know how the money was spent.
Federal Election Commission campaign disclosure reports from 2020 show that much of the money donated to the Trump campaign disappeared into a legal and financial black hole reportedly controlled by members of the Trump family and close associates. This year’s campaign disclosure reports suggest it will be no different. Donors large and small are giving their hard-earned money to candidates with the expectation that it will be spent on direct vote-winning efforts. They deserve better.
During the 2020 election, nearly $516 million of the more than $780 million spent by the Trump campaign went to American Made Media Consultants, a private Delaware-based company founded in 2018 that concealed the identities of the ultimate recipients of the donations, according to a complaint filed with the FEC by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. How AMMC spent the money was a mystery even to the Trump campaign, news reports shortly after the election showed.
All but 18 of the 150 largest expenditures in a Trump campaign’s 2020 FEC report went to AMMC. None of the expenditures were itemized or otherwise explained beyond bland descriptions like “placed media,” “text message advertising,” and “online advertising.” FEC rules require candidates to fully and accurately disclose the ultimate recipients of their campaign spending, which typically includes when payments are made through a vendor like AMMC. This disclosure is intended to reassure donors that their contributions are being used for campaign spending. Currently, neither voters nor law enforcement can know whether laws were broken.
AMMC’s first president was reportedly Lara Trump, the wife of Trump’s son Eric. The New York Times reported that AMMC had a treasurer who was also the chief financial officer of Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, signed the plan to create AMMC, and one of Eric Trump’s surrogates from the Trump Organization helped run it.
Mrs. Trump is now co-chair of the Republican National Committee, which announced shortly after she took office that it would join forces with the Trump campaign to raise funds together. The joint setup gives priority to a PAC that pays Trump’s legal fees over the RNC, The Associated Press reported. That makes assurances from Trump’s campaign co-manager that RNC funds would not be used to pay Trump’s legal fees seem even more hollow.
In this election, the Trump campaign and four of its PACs paid at least $18 million to Red Curve Solutions, another private company. The Campaign Legal Center says Red Curve appears to pay Trump’s legal fees and is then reimbursed by the PACs. (The law is unclear about what kinds of legal fees can be paid by campaigns, but some are allowed.) The head of Red Curve also serves as treasurer for the Trump campaign as well as its affiliated PACs.
What percentage of the donations go to Mr Trump’s lawyers? That’s impossible to say.
In June, NBC revealed the existence of a new, secretive company called Launchpad Strategies. Launchpad raised nearly $15 million in political money from Trump through the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee and the Trump National Committee. Little is known about this new group. It was founded in 2023 and the Trump campaign says it is affiliated with fundraising. We don’t know who owns it, who runs it, or where the $15 million went.
It seems likely that Trump is keeping a close eye on donations flowing through campaign vehicles controlled by family members and loyalists. Yet from early March to July of this year, the Biden and now Harris campaigns spent three times more on advertising than the Trump campaign. By the end of May, the Democratic campaign had opened 200 field offices and hired 1,000 staff in key states. The Trump campaign did not open its first office in the crucial transition area of Pennsylvania until June. The Biden campaign had 24 offices there in April.
Biden’s campaign also spent donations on legal fees, although apparently in much smaller amounts. The team paid more than $1 million for lawyers as part of a special investigation into the president’s handling of classified documents, The Associated Press reported in April.
Perhaps the Trump campaign is saving up for a post-Labor Day blitz. Or perhaps Brad Parscale, whose strategy firm raised $94 million from pro-Trump groups during the 2016 campaign, spent every penny of it on the president’s reelection. We do know that he apparently paid himself handsomely for it, buying a $2.4 million waterfront estate in Fort Lauderdale, a BMW X6, a Range Rover and a Ferrari. When Trump learned of Parscale’s lavish lifestyle, he exclaimed, “That’s my money!” according to Michael Bender’s book on the Trump campaign. Concerns about Parscale reportedly led Kushner to ensure that AMMC was fully controlled by the Trump family and trusted lieutenants.
Donors should demand more information about how their money is being spent, but that would most likely anger the Trump family and the confidants running the campaign. And the point of donating to Mr. Trump is to curry favor with him.
And – hypothetically, of course – if Vice President Kamala Harris were to extend her lead in the polls and the chances of Mr Trump winning dwindle, who would be surprised if the unknown owners of the mysterious companies were to pay themselves more while the campaign taps are flowing and the future is uncertain?
The Federal Election Commission should require all campaigns to disclose recipients of more than $200 in campaign funds. At least, that’s what the law says. The Campaign Legal Center tried to get the FEC to enforce the disclosure rules on the Trump campaign. Commissioners voted 3-3 to dismiss the case, and federal courts declined to intervene. The Legal Center has appealed the case to the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The commission, long notorious in Washington for its inefficiency, now appears to be unable to perform its basic enforcement function. The agency reportedly had only three open investigations in June, despite the proliferation of hundreds of new campaigns and PACs. Congress should require that recipients of campaign contributions be better monitored. And if the law is inadequate, Congress should pass new law.
Juleanna Glover is CEO of Ridgely Walsh, a management consultancy, and former advisor to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Steve Forbes and Rudy Giuliani. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
