

Two of Donald Trump’s political action committees spent an astonishing $29 million in legal consulting and legal fees in the second half of last year, leaving only $5 million in his leadership PAC’s coffers.
The expenditures provide a stark illustration of how Trump’s courtroom issues have not just defined his campaign but begun to overwhelm it. In total, the former president spent roughly $50 million in donor funds on legal expenses over the course of 2023.
As Trump barrels towards the Republican presidential nomination, he faces 91 felony counts across four criminal cases that have put his political and legal calendars on a collision course and siphoned off a significant amount of resources from his 2024 efforts. Among those resources is his time. Trump spent several days in the lead up to the votes in Iowa and New Hampshire in courthouses rather than on the campaign trail.
Save America, Trump’s leadership PAC which is funded in part by donations split with his campaign, spent more than $25 million on legal consulting and fees over the last six months of the year, according to campaign finance filings submitted Wednesday evening. A second political committee, Make America Great Again PAC, which received most of its funding from Save America, put forward another more than $4 million on legal bills over the same period. Those totals were in addition to $21 million that Save America spent on legal bills in the first half of 2023.
Save America paid for the legal expenses in part via more than $42 million in refunds it received in 2023 from a third group, Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC to which Save America had given money during the 2022 election cycle.