Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether Trump legitimately paid money from his Save America PAC to vendors or used vendors to mask payments to himself and others.
More recently his team has been asking witnesses about research the Trump campaign commissioned by an outside vendor shortly after the election that was intended to come up with evidence of election fraud. The existence of that research was reported earlier by The Washington Post.
The apparently related investigation into the activities of Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising arm, the Save America PAC in Florida, was emerging even before Mr. Smith arrived in Washington around Christmas from The Hague.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
A vast array of Trump vendors have been subpoenaed. Investigators have been posing questions related to how money was paid to other vendors, indicating that they are interested in whether some entities were used to mask who was being paid or if the payments were for genuine services rendered.
From the reporting what appears to be being examined is who did Trump pay, and were those payments for legitimate services or were Trump and his family using vendors to take money for themselves?
That is a pretty serious charge if Trump and his family were taking funds that were raised under the pretense of fighting election fraud and then paying themselves.
The behavior would not be unprecedented from the Trumps. They did something very similar with Trump Inaugural Fund. The Trump Organization has been under investigation for years for potentially stealing from inauguration funds. There are still millions of dollars that have never been recovered, as money that was supposed to go for Trump’s inaugural made it into Trump’s business.
Trump’s Big Lie fundraising drew the scrutiny of the 1/6 Committee, and Special Counsel is deeping deep on Trump’s fundraising and spending.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
