Donations under $8K to Trump ‘election defense’ instead go to president, RNC
As President Donald Trump seeks to discredit last week's election with baseless claims of voter fraud, his team has bombarded his supporters with requests for money to help pay for legal challenges to the results: “The Left will try to STEAL this election!” reads one text.
But any small-dollar donations from Trump's grassroots donors won't be going to legal expenses at all, according to a Reuters review of the legal language in the solicitations.
A donor would have to give more than $8,000 before any money goes to the "recount account" established to finance election challenges, including recounts and lawsuits over alleged improprieties, the fundraising disclosures show.
The emailed solicitations send supporters to an “Official Election Defense Fund” website that asks them to sign up for recurring donations to “protect the results and keep fighting even after Election Day.”
The fine print makes clear most of the money will go to other priorities.
A large portion of the money goes to "Save America," a Trump leadership PAC, or political action committee, set up on Monday, and the Republican National Committee (RNC). Under Federal Election Commission rules, both groups have broad leeway in how they can use the funds....
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North Carolina Republican Party has launched a similar strategy, using the election challenges as a way to raise money for other purposes. In several mass emails to potential donors this week, the party says - alongside images of Trump - that it is seeking money to help protect the integrity of the elections.
The legal disclosures, however, show the money is going to an account to pay for the party's overhead costs and not directly to any challenges of this presidential election. Trump is expected to win North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes.
"They should be more transparent," said one prominent North Carolina Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If they are soliciting money to help with a legal challenge, and instead the money is going to pay the salary of the political director, that doesn’t seem right.”
Tim Wigginton, a spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, said in a statement that the party wants to “ensure every legal ballot is counted” but did not address questions about whether the fundraising appeals are misleading or why the donations are not being directed to legal defense.
. Not that it's had any apparent effect on Repug pols a week later.
PINO's former national security adviser?
Anything Doug Collins is involved with is guaranteed to go off the rails, and with that and those two other GOP moonbat Senators, this whole thing could be a trumpist hullaballoo.....Luffler and Per Due are both nutty as a log. I like it. If they can get Peter Navarro involved in it, that's even better. Oh, maybe Marsha Blackburn can come down and help them out as well.
