According to a bombshell new complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission, Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection campaign has “disguised nearly $170 million” in campaign spending “by laundering the funds” through various companies either led by former campaign manager Brad Parscale or created by lawyers for Trump’s campaign.
The complaint, containing a staggering 82 pages, was filed today by the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, and claims that the Trump campaign is masking payments to several different advertising companies as well as payments to Trump family members such as his daughter-in-law, Eric Trump’s wife Lara, and Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle — a direct violation of federal campaign-transparency rules.
The Campaign Legal Center’s president and a former Republican chairman of the FEC, Trevor Potter, said, “Voters have a clear right under the law to know how campaigns are spending money to influence elections. Without this information, they certainly should be asking, ‘what is the Trump campaign hiding?'”
The focus of the complaint filed by the Campaign Legal Center’s is an ad company based in Deleware, American Made Media Consultants, that was created back in 2018 and garnered support from the Trump campaign to put together their huge ad-buying program.
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An in-house ad-buying company not only helps reduce commissions that the campaign would have likely otherwise paid to outside companies, but also allows them to hide the identities of subcontractors that the ad company may be employing.
The Trump campaign’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh, spoke with Business Insider and had this to say:
AMMC does not earn any commissions or fees. It builds efficiencies and saves the campaign money by providing these in-house services that otherwise would be done by outside vendors. The campaign reports all payments to AMMC as required by the FEC. The campaign complies with all campaign finance laws and FEC regulations.
As I’m sure you’ve not forgotten, Trump labeled himself “the most transparent president, probably, in the history of this country” and former campaign manager Brad Parscale even went so far as to claim to the Washington Examiner that the creation of AMMC was an effort “to make sure that I am running the most transparent campaign possible.”
However, it’s clear that transparency has been and will continue to lack in the Trump campaign, at no real surprise.
Donald Trump has been a con man all his life. Whoever thought for a moment that the presidency would somehow change that… Well, I’ve got some oceanfront property in the middle of Arizona that you’re just gonna love.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/David Shankbone
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