Trump draws on campaign donations to pay legal bills

President Donald Trump was proudly litigious before his victory in 2016 and has remained so in the White House. But one big factor has changed: He has drawn on campaign donations as a piggy bank for his legal expenses to a degree far greater than any of his predecessors.

In New York, Trump dispatched a team of lawyers to seek damages of more than $1 million from a former campaign worker after she claimed she had been the target of sexual discrimination and harassment by another aide. The lawyers have been paid $1.5 million by the Trump campaign for work on the case and others related to the president.

In Washington, Trump and his campaign affiliates hired lawyers to assist members of his staff and family — including a onetime bodyguard, his oldest son and his son-in-law — as they were pulled into investigations related to Russia and Ukraine. The Republican National Committee has paid at least $2.5 million in legal bills.

In California, Trump sued to block a law that would have forced him to release his taxes if he wanted to run for re-election. The Trump campaign and the RNC have paid the law firm handling this case, among others, $1.8 million.

Trump’s tendency to turn to the courts — and the legal issues that have stemmed from normbreaking characteristics of his presidency — helps explain how he and his affiliated political entities have spent at least $58.4 million in donations on legal and

compliance work since 2015, according to a tally by The New York Times and the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.

By comparison, President Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee spent $10.7 million on legal and compliance expenses during the equivalent period starting in 2007.

The spending on behalf of Trump covers not only legal work that would be relatively routine for any president or candidate and some of the costs related to the Russia inquiry and his impeachment but also cases in which he has a personal stake, including attempts to enforce nondisclosure agreements and protect his business interests.

It is impossible to know based on Federal Election Commission filings how much of the $58.4 million in total legal bills went to routine legal work. Payments from the political committees to lawyers and law firms are not itemized by case. A spokesman for the Trump family would not

say how much Trump had paid out of his own pocket or his company’s in legal fights.

Drawing on donations to pay many legal expenses is permitted by campaign finance law. But as he has done with other aspects of the presidency, Trump has redefined the practice.

“Vindicating President Trump’s personal interests is now so intertwined with the interests of the Republican Party they are one and the same — and that includes the legal fights the party is paying for now,” said Matthew T. Sanderson, who has served as a campaign finance lawyer to presidential candidates including Rand Paul, Rick Perry and John McCain.

A spokeswoman for the RNC said it was Democrats who were driving this blitz of spending. “The RNC is more than happy to cover the costs of defending the president from the Democrats’ baseless litigation and partisan impeachment sham,” said the spokeswoman, Mandi Merritt.