© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Forum River Center in Rome, Georgia, U.S. March 9, 2024. REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer/File Photo
By Jason Lange and Alexandra Ulmer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A fundraising group run by Donald Trump, who is facing four criminal trials as he seeks the U.S. presidency, stepped up spending on legal fees last month, further draining money from efforts to return him to the White House, financial disclosures showed on Wednesday.
In a filing to the Federal Election Commission, the group, known as Save America, detailed legal expense outlays totaling more than $5.5 million in February, the biggest single month of such spending since Trump, a Republican, formed the organization in 2020 following his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in that year’s presidential election.
The spending marked an acceleration from the close to $3 million Save America reported spending on legal bills in January. The group, which raises money together with Trump’s election campaign but is legally separate, has now spent more than $55 million on legal bills since the start of 2023.
Trump is facing dozens of charges, with two of the cases against him tied to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. He has plead innocent to all the charges.
Trump clinched enough delegates this month in the Republican nomination contest to be the party’s nominee in the November presidential election, setting up a rematch against Biden.
Save America’s filing on Wednesday, together with another filed by an allied group, also showed how the legal bills are hitting the accounts backing his White House bid.
Save America’s main income during the month was a $5 million refund of money largely raised from small donors that it transferred in 2022 to the main super PAC backing Trump, MAGA Inc. The super PAC, a kind of political action committee (PAC) that can take unlimited contributions from wealthy donors, has now returned most the $60 million it received from Save America, meaning it has had less to spend supporting Trump.
The refund was equivalent to nearly half of the $12.8 million that MAGA Inc raised from mostly wealthy donors during the month, which included a $5 million contribution from hotelier Robert Bigelow, the super PAC’s disclosure showed.
In addition to its spending, Save America also reported a debt obligation of more than $500,000 to a legal firm that has been representing Trump, telling the Federal Election Commission it owed the firm for “legal consulting.”
Separately, Trump’s campaign told the Federal Election Commission it raised $10.9 million February, an increase from the $8.8 million it took in the prior month.
Trump has trailed Biden in fundraising throughout the campaign cycle. Biden’s campaign is also due later on Wednesday to report to the Federal Election Commission on its finances.