Donald Trump’s courtroom dramas are beginning to overwhelm his political ambitions.
The GOP front-runner’s re-election campaign spent millions more than it took in over the course of 2023, with the vast majority of expenditures going to Trump’s legal fees, reported Politico.
According to the outlet’s analysis of Trump’s campaign finance filings, made public Wednesday, the real estate mogul’s “web of committees”—which include his campaign, Save America, Make America Great Again PAC, his joint fundraising committee, and MAGA Inc.—tossed money back and forth between them, spending roughly $210 million during the last year. That’s $10 million more than it raised.
Perhaps even more writing on the wall for Trump: the former president used approximately $50 million in donations to cover his legal fees over the course of 2023.
Save America, Trump’s leadership PAC, spent more than $25 million on consulting and legal fees in the second half of the year alone—paying dues to more than 47 law firms and attorneys. That’s on top of some $21 million that the PAC spent on the former president’s mounting legal bill in the first half of the 2023. And the Make America Great Again PAC, which pulls most of its funding from Save America, put an additional $4 million toward Trump’s tab in the latter half of 2023, as well.
That reportedly left just $5 million in the tank for his leadership PACs, according to Politico.
Meanwhile, Republicans will need to be tightening their belts, as well, with recent filings suggesting that the conservative party wasn’t quite so fiscally minded last year. An end-of-year FEC filing revealed that the Republican National Committee had just $8 million on hand, per The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell.
Trump’s campaign is still in the green, however, thanks to a surplus in fundraising from previous years. But the high expenditures signal bad omens ahead for Trump as he grapples with not just the general election but also 91 felony charges across four separate, upcoming trials.