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FILE — Former President Donald Trump speaks during a commit to caucus rally, Dec. 13, 2023, in Coralville, Iowa. Trump’s lawyers are pressing to have special counsel Jack Smith’s team held in contempt. The Republican former president’s lawyers said Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024, prosecutors have taken steps to advance the 2020 election interference case against him in violation of a judge’s order that put the case on hold. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and four associated political committees violated federal campaign finance law, according to a complaint filed by a nonpartisan public interest watchdog.
Late Wednesday, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) submitted a 30-page complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that “five political committees authorized by or affiliated with former President Donald Trump” violated mandatory reporting obligations.
The complaint alleges that those reporting violations were facilitated by GOP consulting, accounting and compliance firm Red Curve Solutions in violation of federal “contribution limits and prohibitions.”
According to the complaint, Red Curve “routinely advanced money” to each of the committees “or paid for the cost of legal services provided by other vendors” to the tune of some $7.2 million. Later, “Red Curve was reimbursed by the committees,” the complaint alleges.
The named committees singled out by the filing are Trump’s actual 2024 presidential campaign, his Save America PAC, the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, the Make America Great Again PAC, and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee.
The complaint also notes that each of the five committees has the same treasurer of record.
Throughout the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, and current up to March, “Red Curve received 108 disbursements from these five committees,” the filing notes. The complaint claims “virtually all” of those disbursements are described as “Reimbursement Legal Fees” or “Reimbursement Legal Expenses” and total exactly $7,206,474.55.
“It is unclear from available information whether these payments were exclusively for Trump’s own legal costs, whether they include costs stemming from the representation of others linked to Trump or the Trump-affiliated Committees, or even whether they included payments for expenses unrelated to legal services,” the filing reads.
Obfuscation, however, appears to be the point, according to CLC.
“Red Curve appears to have been fronting legal costs for Trump since at least December 2022, with Trump-affiliated committees repaying the company later,” CLC said in a press release. “This arrangement appears to violate FEC rules that require campaigns to disclose not only the entity being reimbursed (here, Red Curve) but also the underlying vendor. By not disclosing the vendors that actually provided legal services, the Trump-affiliated committees effectively blocked the public from knowing which attorneys and firms are being paid — and how much they are being paid.”
The filing offers the following rundown of the alleged “scheme”:
[U]nder this payment scheme, the names and addresses of the vendors who actually provided the legal services that the Trump-affiliated Committees reimbursed Red Curve for were wholly obscured from public view, along with the dates, amounts, and purposes for the payments they received for those services. Instead, only Red Curve appears on the public record, despite the fact that Red Curve does not appear to have provided any legal services — let alone legal services valued at over $7.2 million.
Moreover, the group claims, the arrangement suggests Red Curve is guilty of violating federal campaign finance law as well.
To hear CLC tell it, either Red Curve “knowingly” violated the 2022 and 2024 contribution limits under federal law — by an “excessive” amount if the company is structured as an LLC or partnership. Or, if structured as a corporation, then those contributions violated the law barring corporations from contributing to political candidates or committees.
Additionally, the Trump committees knowingly accepted those excessive or prohibited contributions, the complaint alleges.
“Voters have a right to know how the presidential campaigns and other committees supporting presidential candidates spend their money. When campaigns and committees obscure that information from the public, not only do they make it difficult to determine if the law has been violated, but they deny voters the ability to make an informed choice when casting a ballot,” CLC campaign finance director Erin Chlopak said in a statement. “The steps taken by the Trump campaign, its affiliated committees and Red Curve Solutions concealed information about how campaign funds were used to pay former President Trump’s legal expenditures, including the amounts and ultimate recipients of these expenditures — and the FEC must investigate immediately.”
