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RNC Is Said to Agree to Pay Up to $1.6 Million of Trump's Personal Legal Bills
The Republican National Committee has agreed to cover up to $1.6 million of Donald Trump’s personal legal bills, according to a person familiar with the matter, in an unusual arrangement under which the party is paying to defend the former president from ongoing investigations that focus on his private business practices.
The first payments, for $121,670, were made in October to the firm of Trump’s lawyer Ronald P. Fischetti, and were publicly reported last month to the Federal Election Commission.
The decision by the Republican Party to cover up to $1.6 million in legal fees was first reported Thursday by The Washington Post and was confirmed by the person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
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Emma Vaughn, an RNC spokesperson, said in a statement that the party’s executive committee had approved “paying for certain legal expenses” related to Trump.
“As a leader of our party, defending President Trump and his record of achievement is critical to the GOP,” she said. “It is entirely appropriate for the RNC to continue assisting in fighting back against the Democrats’ never-ending witch hunt and attacks on him.”
Fischetti is representing Trump as prosecutors in Manhattan weigh the possibility of charging him with fraud. At issue is whether he inflated the value of his assets to defraud lenders, according to people familiar with the investigation. The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, has questioned one of Trump’s accountants before a grand jury in recent weeks.
In a parallel civil fraud investigation, the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, whose office is also involved in the criminal inquiry, is seeking to question Trump under oath. The former president has accused both investigations of being politically motivated, and many Republican leaders have echoed his arguments.
“Letitia James wants to politically weaponize her position as Attorney General instead of exemplifying impartiality and protecting the interests of all New Yorkers,” Trump said in a statement Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Fischetti declined to comment. The RNC will disclose its November spending, including any lawyer fees for Trump, by Dec. 20.
Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University and an expert on legal ethics, said that the payments did not necessarily raise any ethical problem from a legal perspective, as long as the party neither influenced Trump’s lawyers in any way nor gained access to confidential information that might arise in the course of the investigations.
But the payments showed Trump’s enduring hold on the party he led for four years in the White House. The party continues to lean heavily on his name and popularity in its online fundraising appeals. He is a lure for major donors as well, and headlined the National Republican Congressional Committee’s fall fundraiser last month in Florida.
Daron Shaw, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and a former strategist for George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, said the payments pointed to Trump’s “total command of the party apparatus.”
“Organizationally, the Republican Party is still a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump for president,” Shaw said. “Until the next heir to the throne is apparent, he’s still the king.”
Adonna Biel, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said that “if we were the RNC’s donors, we would certainly be asking questions.”
In the past, several of Trump’s lawyers have clashed with him over their legal fees. In 2019, his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen sued the Trump Organization, Trump’s family business, saying that the company had not fulfilled an agreement to cover its legal costs. In May, The New York Times reported that another lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had been pressing aides to the former president to pay him for his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
