Back in 2000, when Donald Trump was considering a presidential run on the Reform Party ticket, he told Fortune, "It's very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it." And though it's hard to say whether Trump has actually managed to turn a profit (at least not without getting a look at his tax returns), according to his re-election campaign's FEC filings, Donald Trump is sure as hell trying his best.
Even though Trump is, in fact, the current president, he only stopped running for a brief few hours on Inauguration Day. As soon as Trump filed for re-election, at 5:11 pm on January 20, his campaign officially sprang back into action. That means Trump can legally continue to funnel funds from donors back into his own businesses. According to the Trump campaign's self-reported FEC filings, this has amounted to about $600,000 spent at Trump-owned properties in just the first six months of his presidency.
Nearly $400,000 of that campaign money went to rent at Trump Tower, with $90,000 going to the The Trump Corporation for "legal consulting," nearly $60,000 to the Trump International Golf Club, $15,000 to the Trump International Hotel in DC, and about $1,700 to Trump-brand bottled water, among various payments. And that's just the money that went to businesses in which Trump has a personal role. The Trump campaign has spent a total of $10 million in the last six months; any shell companies and subsidiaries of other Trump-owned businesses that may have gotten a piece of that don't have to be disclosed.
What's more, this number doesn't include the more nebulous (and almost certainly larger) total spent on Trump's businesses simply by virtue of Trump being president. According to filings released last month by the Office of Government Ethics (whose director, Walter Shaub, quit earlier this month in protest of the executive branch's refusal to obey ethical norms) Trump's seen the income from his properties increase by tens of millions of dollars since he started campaigning. And the Trump family seems happy to do their part to help that along. After his election victory, Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort doubled its initiation fee to $200,000.
Not to mention the fact that any time either Trump or his family members stay at any Trump property (which they often do), the Secret Service is paying a Trump business for the privilege of accompanying them. For instance, The Washington Post reported that, of the $60 million in additional funding the Secret Service has requested for next year, $26.8 million would go toward protecting Trump's family in Trump Tower. And since the inauguration, the Secret Service has spent over $35,000 on Trump-owned golf cart rentals alone. Trump, of course, could easily choose to waive those fees if he so desired. As for the campaign front, the Republican National Committee held a $10 million re-election fund-raiser last month at the Trump International Hotel in DC—which, according to The New York Times, charged the RNC "regular prices" to use its facilities.
These sorts of expenses lining the president's own pocket is unprecedented. "No other president has presided over this many growing concerns," says Daniel Weiner, Senior Counsel for The Brennan Center at NYU's Democracy Program. "FDR and JFK were wealthy scions, but they didn’t really have anything to to do with the family business. Trump is unique—not only in his wealth and involvement with his business, but also in his clear personal preference to, whenever possible, stick to his own companies. He wants to live in his own buildings; he wants to do business there; and he wants to eat at his own restaurants."
The president's preference for keeping his campaign funds within the Trump universe whenever possible may lack precedent, but doing so doesn't necessarily violate any laws. The main potential issue at play is a legal concept called "personal use." Basically, when candidates raise campaign money, they can use it for any purpose related to getting themselves elected—or, if they're already a public official, they can use it for a number of official purposes. They can't, though, use the money for anything unrelated to the campaign or office. In Trump's case, that leaves a bit of a gray area.
"The argument is that funneling campaign funds to your business could also be considered personal use," said Weiner. "Except here’s the catch: If your business is selling or providing a bonafide service to your campaign, I don’t believe there is anything illegal about that. The question really is: Is the campaign paying a fair rate or a fair value for the service?" We've reached out the White House for comment, and will update if and when we hear back.
Despite its likely legality, the Trump campaign paying out so much to Trump companies remains morally dubious at best, say Weiner. "Bribery, in its purest form, is paying someone to benefit themselves personally in exchange for political favor. So when campaign money—which is usually tied up in not just benefiting the campaign itself, but in getting them elected and enacting their agenda—is literally just flowing into the candidate's pocket, obviously that raises concerns that go to the heart of why we worry about money in politics in the first place."
Trump and his associates, however, have never seemed overly worried about appearances. That lackadaisical attitude about things like "ethics" and "rules," after all, drove former OGE director Shaub to resign in the first place.
The Trump campaign's expenditures on Trump businesses continues a trend that began in the 2016 presidential race. According to an analysis by CNN, in the time leading up to election day last year, the Trump campaign spent roughly $12.5 million at Trump-branded properties. And while it does make some sense for Trump to work out of properties he already owns, the sheer volume of the cash flow doesn't seem to have been entirely by accident. Last July, for instance, Trump Tower charged the Trump campaign $169,758 in rent, a significant price hike from the $35,458 the campaign had paid as recently as March. The difference? By July, Trump had started raising outside funds, meaning that the money the Trump campaign was funneling into Trump Tower was no longer his own. Trump, notoriously stingy, appears better at spending the money of his donors than his own–especially when he's the beneficiary.
Similarly, expect Trump's spending on Trump to increase sharply in the months and years ahead. His 2020 campaign held its first official fundraiser on June 28–at the Trump International Hotel in DC, naturally. Expect them to put that money to good use. Or at least, expect a lot of it to go to Trump.
