One of the more counterintuitive facts about how wealth works is that rich people don’t pay for things themselves if they can help it. For example, former President Donald Trump, whose net worth Forbes most recently estimated at $2.5 billion, is relying on other people to pay his spiraling legal fees in the midst of four criminal cases and several long-running civil suits.
Trump’s Save America PAC has spent more than $20 million in the first six months of 2023 just on legal fees — and $40 million in total going back to 2021. This enormous expenditure has benefited Trump directly, as well as a select number of associates, including his co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Trump’s approach has prompted questions from experts about whether the arrangement is meant to keep certain people from flipping on the former president.
With Monday’s sprawling indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, though, the number of allies who could cooperate with the government has grown. And based on recent reports, it seems like the famously stingy Trump isn’t helping several of his best-known co-defendants with their own legal bills. That decision may save Trump cash in the short term, but it could very well come back to bite him in the long run.
That decision may save Trump cash in the short term, but it could very well come back to bite him in the long run.
For prominent examples of Trump’s footing the bill for his underlings, look at Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who have been charged alongside him in the federal classified documents case. On Trump’s dime, the firm Brand Woodward Law is representing Nauta, as well as the likes of former Defense Department stooge Kash Patel and former chief poster Dan Scavino. Trump’s Save America PAC also is paying the firm representing De Oliveira’s lawyer, John Irving, who “has been reported to represent several others close to Trump, including Peter Navarro, Stephen Miller, [and] GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania,” NBC News reported last month.
The Washington Post reported this month that the decision about who gets their legal fees covered mostly falls to Trump adviser Susie Wiles, head of the Save America PAC. “Wiles has decided that almost all legal bills incurred by Trump consultants, employees and others should be paid, according to people familiar with the discussions, because they were incurred as a result of their work for Trump,” according to the Post.
Those criteria apparently exclude a number of people in the Georgia case, most notably the lawyers associated with Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Several are named among the 19 co-defendants, including Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Jenna Ellis. While attorney-client privilege may cover some of their actions, a federal judge has already determined in a civil case related to Eastman that the “crime-fraud exception” overrules that protection.
Some of those who are named in the indictment seem even less likely than others to receive help. Ellis has been a vocal supporter of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the GOP presidential primaries. That stance has made her a target for her former compatriots, including former Justice Department lawyer, and current co-defendant, Jeffrey Clarke. Ellis hasn’t been waiting around to see whether the reports that her support for DeSantis will get cut her off totally from Save America’s financial support are true; she has already begun fundraising to help pay her legal fees.
Ellis’ other co-defendants are also struggling to maintain legal support. Despite his mocking of Ellis, Clarke is also trying to raise cash to pay his legal bills. One of Powell’s representatives during her many post-2020 legal woes, Howard Kleinhendler, left her defense team last year, and it’s not clear who has stepped up in his place. Powell has been mostly cut adrift from Trump’s orbit, with Rolling Stone reporting that her former colleagues have thrown her under the bus in testimony to federal prosecutors.
And then there’s the person with the most knowledge of Trump’s actions, Giuliani, who, along with the charges against him in Georgia, is “co-conspirator 1” in the federal indictment against his former client for trying to overturn the 2020 election’s results. He also happens to be the person in Trump’s orbit who is the most desperate for cash. His attorney Adam Katz told a court in New York last week that Giuliani is struggling under the weight of his legal fees, including “$90,000 in sanctions from a judge in a defamation case, a $20,000 monthly fee to a company to host his electronic records, $15,000 or more for a search of his records, and even a $57,000 judgment against his company for unpaid phone bills,” CNN reported Tuesday.
Trump isn’t unaware of his former friend’s problems — he just doesn’t seem to particularly care.
It’s a sad state of affairs for the former mayor. Giuliani’s high-spending lifestyle and constant need for new income have been well-documented. But some of his current woes can be chalked up to Trump’s allegedly having reneged on a “handshake agreement” to pay Giuliani and his associates for their work after the 2020 election. That is, of course, the same work that has left Giuliani criminally indicted and with his law license suspended in New York and Washington.
Trump isn’t unaware of his former friend’s problems — he just doesn’t seem to particularly care. CNN reported Wednesday that Giuliani traveled to Mar-a-Lago with his lawyer Robert Costello in April to talk about the “seven-figure legal fees” he has run up since Trump left office. “But the former president, who is notoriously strict about dipping into his own coffers, didn’t seem very interested,” CNN reported. “After Costello made his pitch, Trump verbally agreed to help with some of Giuliani’s legal bills without committing to any specific amount or timeline.”
This penny-pinching seems like a bad idea when you consider that there’s still a chance that federal prosecutors could charge Giuliani for his role in trying to flip the 2020 election’s outcome — and in turn offer some kind of deal if he became a witness against Trump. The same could be said for any number of the people potentially left out to dry in Fulton County, including several indicted defendants who never worked for Trump at all, like former Georgia GOP chair David Shafer.
And this stinginess hasn’t changed the fact that Trump’s political committee is paying a massive amount of money in legal fees, potentially threatening the presidential run that would inoculate him from several of these cases. If the idea behind that expenditure is to keep the people who know where the metaphorical bodies are buried in check, then getting cheap now seems like a major strategic error for Trump.
