Donald Trump’s political operation is reeling after spending around $60 million on legal fees pertaining to the four criminal indictments and various ongoing civil lawsuits against him.
Disclosures indicate that Trump’s campaign and the various political action committees supporting it blew through tens of millions of dollars in 2023, leaving him cash-strapped heading into 2024.
Save America PAC, Trump’s primary PAC heading into his likely rematch with President Joe Biden, once had over $100 million in the bank. Now, it has just a little over $5 million left after spending over $25 million on legal bills in the second half of last year alone.
And Trump’s donations have sucked all the air out of the room for all GOP candidates, state parties, etc. They’re throwing the 2024 war chest down the endless hole of Trump’s legal problems. Isn’t he supposed to be a billionaire?
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Looking forward to seeing exactly what that real estate is actually worth when he’s forced to divest and pay the judgements against him.
probably half underwater, loaded down with debt; and the rest, likely falling apart in need of significant renovations.
who am i kidding? it’s likely all loaded down with debt.
Does Deutchbank debt count as actual debt? I always figured with all the money laundering, that if he had to sell any of his actual properties (which are mostly shitty golf courses at this point), that the Russian moon would be charging him by the kneecap.
It’s the worst time to sell as well, with high interest rates and nobody wanting to be associated with anything Trump.
The New York properties will definitely sell if it comes to that, no problem. 3 desirable towers of luxury apartments in NYC would be worth a ton.
Even if they have to gut the whole damned thing, the superstructure alone is probably worth the money.
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Sure. But only a portion of that loss equal to the tax rate. I don’t know what that rate is, but it it’s 30% then he’s eating 70% of the loss.
People keep throwing these accounting rules around as if they make losses not matter at all. They do.
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If engeron fines him 300-400 million he’s fucked.
How has Trump always survived his other fiascos? Ans, Putin. The only question is which oligarch will buy his building at 20X what it is worth, then sell it back to him, under market value.
How can he pay less than zero?
It can carry over for several years
Lol, that’s not how any of this works
How much is office space? That’s not worth a lot anymore. If he’s lucky he owns a lot to apartments
NYC real estate is always valuable.
He’s a billion dollars in debt.
Pinhead fucknuts think that means he’s a billionaire. He’s got a billion dollars less than nothing.
Relevant: he’s a convicted fraud.
Funny how you can live like a king if you’re $1 billion in debt, but if you just have no money, you’re just going to be homeless.
I have a problem if I owe the bank a thousand dollars. The bank has a problem if I owe them a million dollars.
It needs to be a lot more than ‘just’ a million to make a bank really sweat and act abnormal; at that level you’re just a criminal they pursue.
A Newsweek article says he has $2.6B networth with $426M in cash and liquid assets. However, that very article is about the trial where he inflated his assets, so the basis for that may be completely wrong.
That trial could put him under penalty of $370M. The Carroll lawsuit is $83.3M. Even if we take his liquid assets above as a given, he’d be wiped out, and his real estate is worth a fraction of what he claims.
Trump needs to be in jail, but he’d also be Al Capone running his empire from a cell if he had to. Kick him in the money. That hurts him personally.
God, I hope they fine him based on the amount of money he says he has.
Yeah, as literally every developer in NY said for years. Even before his presidential run:
“How do you make $1M in real estate?”
A: Give Trump $100M.
Trump’s supposed wealth was always mostly marketing. Being a billionaire was literally his brand image.
It’s a lot like how Elron Musk theoretically is worth billions, but still feels the need to run funny schemes on doge coin. He can’t sell substantial amounts and get cash without reducing the Tesla share price and thus his overall net worth even more than what he took out.
Not wholy true, he might not be able to sell his stocks but he can take out loans against them for money.
It’s the Buy, Borrow, Die Strategy, and how they avoid taxes as well. He’s not poor he doesn’t need to grift and he has all the liquid money he could ever need for a thousand life times…
Elton still does feel the need to do shit like pump Dogecoin though. Maybe it’s just for the thrill of scamming people.
He’s a billionaire because he doesn’t spend his own money. He spends someone else’s.
He’s not strapped for cash. He sold U.S. secrets to the Saudis for $2 Billion. Jared Kushner is holding his money for him. He won’t actually be broke until we go after that pot of stolen gold.
You know Kishner and Ivanka flipped on him. They probably negotiated too keep the money in exchange for their information on what he did.
It’s $2 billion that still belongs to the Saudis. Jared is getting a management fee of probably $20 million per year. Definitely still a bribe/payment for services rendered just trying to say the amount and mechanism are not what you think.
I’ve always understood their “investment” into a company that doesn’t actually do anything to be very similar to a “loan” given to Clarence Thomas that he never has to repay or report (because it’s just a loan y’all).
Is this /c/conspiracy? Why have I not heard of this
It’s $2b invested in a fund. I.e. trivially converted into fees and then funneled to whatever.
Was reported early 2022. About same time people were focusing on Ukraine.
Maybe that’s because his PAC is blowing millions getting its ass kicked in Ukraine?
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What wonderful news to start my day
Holy fuck he’s paying his own legal bills from campaign money? I guess it’s not illegal.
He had the RNC paying them for a while. Supposedly what he’s doing now is okay because his website says that’s where the money is going.
If he’s not hiding anything and the donators are fine with it… Doesn’t seem illegal
The problem is how transparent they are being. If you get an email saying “TRUMP NEEDS YOUR HELP TAKING ON THE WOKE MOB” and there’s a big donate button that brings you to donate to “SAVE AMERICA PAC” and it just so happens that they’re spending 90% of their money on his legal defense, how well informed were you?
the math gets complicated when you realize the initial value for ‘informed’ was imaginary.
When he gets elected and either pardons himself or never leaves the White House until his death, none of this matters to him a single bit.
Spending $50 million on legal fees instead of building out campaign infrastructure and paying for ads reduces the odds he gets elected though.
Way to many things about campaigning and financing are not illegal, and that needs to get fixed.
Oh, yeah, that’d be great, but corporations are people. Except in terms of wage theft, unsafe working conditions, or dangerous products. There’s nobody to put in jail for those, nothing we can do, sorry!
No worries, he’ll release some more NFT trading cards for $2-300 a pop and he’ll sell a shit ton of them because his followers are fucking dumbshits. Bitch and moan about the economy but then buy his crap.
They’re also a very easy way to launder money from Russia
How? I am asking for a friend of course ;)
“Biden’s economy is so bad that I can’t pay my Trump bill this month!”
/s, obviously
He’s gonna need to sell a whole lot more digital trading cards to refill the coffers. I wonder how many times he can do that scam and still have it work.
Forever because his supporters are mindless drones that do as he demands. Much like those mega churches both are cults.
I wonder if churches are seeing a loss in their
profitsdonations and might turn against their orange God.Long term they’re screwed without a fascist takeover so they’re probably fine with it
State Republican organizations have recently been having financial problems in part because people donate directly to Trump vs them.
“vlad, ol buddy, o pal-o-mine… i need some money.”
“me too,” replies the russian. “nyet!”
How is it legal for him to use funds raised for a political campaign on his personal legal fees? Isn’t this a kind of fraud or something?
Legally - Trump can’t use the super PAC funds at all. The super PAC decides what it does with the money. The PAC chose to pay the legal fees… However - we all know behind closed doors there is plenty of communication about what that money is used for…
At least that is my understanding of super pacs
Edit: it’s not a super PAC sorry, just a PAC. I’m not a Pac-Man so I got confused. Wakka wakka.
, EH EH. Tsamina mina zangalewa This time for Africa.
Maybe he should stop harassing his rape victim.
They blew the entire war chest on legal fees and he still can’t afford to pay his lawyers.
It would have been a lot cheaper to just, you know, not incite an insurrection and defraud investors and sexually abuse women.
Hurr hurr hurr hurr…
As with any war, strategy takes a back seat to logistics, and logistics take a back seat to financing.
Can’t win a war with out money for lunchables for the crayon eaters (love you). Go after the sources of funding and the game gets real, real quick.
A butchered quote from my favorite book on strategy:
The worst is to go after their fortresess, and the next worse to go after their soldiers in the field.
Beyond that it is better to go after their ability to organize, their logistics. Better even, to go after their alliances and finances.
Best of all is to win in the field of their ideas themselves.
People pay Trump because of a parasocial relationship where they believe they are having some effect. If they see that money as being lit on fire for Trumps failed court proceedings, this is an oppurtunity to drive a wedge between Trump and what he needs so much to keep his, likely absurd, burn rate going. Go after his relationships.
Best of all is to win in the field of their ideas themselves.
“A true victory is to make your enemy see they were wrong to oppose you in the first place.” - Gul Dukat
He literally could not afford to not run for President, no matter what effects that has upon the nation (especially if he wins).
It’s funny, if he never decided to run for president, he could have kept scamming people and assaulting women until he died and no one would have really cared.
Now he’s in a position where he has to run again, because it’s the only thing that can save him from the consequences of the first time he ran.
This is why I think the “rich white people never face consequences” crowd have it wrong. They tend not to face consequences because they have lawyers to find loopholes in the first place, and then they make sure to keep it all out of the public eye, and then if they do get noticed, they listen to those lawyers and don’t do things to perjure themselves.
Trump failed at every one of those.
I know what you mean - in many ways he’s a victim himself, even though he’s also a cause, both of his own suffering, as well as ours. But it’s the system that is screwed up, not (just) him.
He should just squeeze his base for more cash. They don’t mind.
Time to milk the rubes with some more NFTs.
I guess the lawyers will vote for him. He will keep them busy for quite a while to come.
