Donald Trump finds a way to line his pockets with campaign donations.
Donald Trump has been “bragging for a year about how cheaply he was running his campaign,” but now that others are contributing he is spending more freely – “particularly when the beneficiary is himself,” according to a report by Huffington Post.
Reviewing Federal Election Commission filings, Huffington Post discovered that “Trump nearly quintupled the monthly rent his presidential campaign pays for its headquarters at Trump Tower to $169,758 in July, when he was raising funds from donors, compared with March, when he was self-funding his campaign.”
NBC News conducted their own analysis, reporting that: “In July, Trump spent $169,785 on rent compared to $110,684 in June, which is a huge jump from the $35,457 rental payment the campaign paid from August of 2015 until April of 2016.”
Referring to the Huffington Post report, NBC News reports “That report led to accusations that Trump’s company hiked the rent in order to convert donors’ campaign contributions into profits for the real estate mogul just as he was stepping up external fundraising efforts.”
The first full month Trump was an official candidate, in July of 2015, Trump paid just under $26,000 in rent. The following month, his rental payments to Trump Tower increased to $35,457 monthly until May 2016, when the amount doubled to $72,800. Presumably, that May increase was to make up a missed payment in October of 2015 when no payment was recorded on campaign finance reports.
The biggest boost in rental payments came this past June, when Trump stopped paying for the lion’s share of his presidential run – other than a $2 million monthly contribution – and started soliciting campaign donations. At that time, payments tripled from $35,457 to $110,684.
A prominent Republican National Committee member who wished to remain anonymous told Huffington Post: “If I was a donor, I’d want answers. If they don’t have any more staff, and they’re paying five times more? That’s the kind of stuff I’d read and try to make an [attack] ad out of it.”
And this isn’t the only instance of Trump profiting financially from his campaign. As NBC News reports “Trump, the only modern-day presidential candidate with ownership stake in so many properties, has consistently been under the microscope for the use of his facilities for campaign events.”
Trump has spent more than $600,000 on rentals for his own facilities, including $48,239 on Trump National Golf Club in Westchester in July and $423,371 on his Palm Beach estate Mar-a-Lago, according to May financial reports. He also reimburses his company TAG Air for flights on his private plane in which he spent $495,000 in July, $466,464 in June, and $641,840 in March.
You can watch Cenk Uygur, founder and CEO of The Young Turks, break it all down in the clip, below:
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