President-elect Donald Trump is using his criminal sentencing as yet another chance to raise money from his supporters, some of which he can use to pay his lawyers or convert to personal use.
Trump was formally sentenced for his felony convictions on Friday, an event he tried desperately to prevent from happening, even though the judge had said in advance Trump would not get a prison sentence or even probation. His “unconditional discharge” means, in the words of The Atlantic’s David Graham, that “Trump will face no penalties other than the stigma of a conviction”—along with some legal consequences of being a convicted felon.
Early on Friday morning, before the sentencing, Trump sent supporters an email with the subject line, “All hell breaks loose today!” In the email Trump claimed, “This unlawful WITCH HUNT is only meant to obstruct the Presidential Transition process.” Trump asked supporters to make a monthly donation “so we can complete the MAGA agenda.”
After Trump’s sentencing, supporters received a text message from Vice President-elect J.D. Vance repeating the “witch hunt” claim and declaring, “The Left needs to be stopped before they DESTROY him and his incredible legacy.”
The fine print from both pitches reveals that contributions will go to Trump National Committee JFC, Inc., which is described as “a joint fundraising committee of Never Surrender (‘the LPAC’) and the Republican National Committee.” It states that 20 percent of contributions to TNC will go to Never Surrender, up to the $5,000 annual limit for a leadership PAC.
Leadership PACs are supposedly vehicles for political leaders to raise money that they can use to support other candidates. But the Campaign Legal Center reported in 2023 that leadership PACS have “long been a source of abuse in our campaign finance system” and that the Federal Election Commission had essentially surrendered to those practices by ruling that the rules that prevent candidates from using campaign funds for personal expenses do not apply to leadership PACs.
When Trump launched Never Surrender in November, Huffington Post noted that many politicians have “used leadership PACs to pay some of their personal expenses, essentially making them slush funds.” Trump used his original leadership PAC, Save America, to pay his massive legal bills; according to HuffPo, Save America had paid lawyers and law firms $86.5 million through mid-October.
Several months earlier, the Brennan Center published an analysis of Trump’s use of both campaign and PAC funds to pay his lawyers, explaining how legal loopholes and lack of enforcement have basically given Trump free rein.
According to Federal Election Commission records, Trump’s principal campaign committee, Donald J. Trump for President, was converted to the Never Surrender Inc. leadership PAC after the election.
Earlier this month, Forbes reported that income from sales of inaugural merchandise are not going to the nonprofit inaugural committee, but to Never Surrender and the RNC, meaning that money from the sales “could ultimately be used to cover Trump’s personal expenses, including legal fees.”
