Quote:After bragging for a year about how cheaply he was running his campaign, Donald Trump is spending more freely now that other people are contributing ― particularly when the beneficiary is himself.

Trump nearly quintupled the monthly rent his presidential campaign pays for its headquarters at Trump Tower to $169,758 in July, when he was raising funds from donors, compared with March, when he was self-funding his campaign, according to a Huffington Post review of Federal Election Commission filings. The rent jumped even though he was paying fewer staff in July than he did in March. 

The Trump campaign paid Trump Tower Commercial LLC $35,458 in March ― the same amount it had been paying since last summer ― and had 197 paid employees and consultants. In July, it paid 172 employees and consultants.

“If I was a donor, I’d want answers,” said a prominent Republican National Committee member who supports Trump, asking for anonymity to speak freely. “If they don’t have any more staff, and they’re paying five times more? That’s the kind of stuff I’d read and try to make an (attack) ad out of it.”

Quote:“If I was a donor, I’d want answers. If they don’t have any more staff, and they’re paying five times more? That’s the kind of stuff I’d read and try to make an (attack) ad out of it.”Republican National Committee member

In addition to the rent for Trump Tower space in Manhattan, Trump has paid his eponymous golf courses and restaurants more than $260,000 since his campaign and the RNC struck a joint fundraising deal in mid-May, after he essentially locked up the GOP nomination.
On May 18, the day the fundraising deal was announced, Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach was paid $29,715; Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, was paid $35,845; and Trump Restaurants LLC was paid $125,080, according to FEC records. Such large payments were much rarer when Trump was self-funding.

It’s unclear from the campaign filings the purpose of the golf course and restaurant payments, although both of the Florida golf courses hosted Trump campaign news conferences in March.

The Trump campaign on Tuesday responded that it had expanded into larger quarters. “Also, Mr. Trump makes a personal contribution of $2 million per month to the campaign, obviously a much higher amount than rent,” the statement said.

Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman, said the increased office space was needed to accommodate an anticipated increase in employees. “We’re constantly adding new staff and in the subsequent weeks after convention, we’ve done that,” he said.

While campaign officials have been promising a larger general election staff for months, though, that has yet to happen.
The FEC filings show that Trump began increasing the rent at Trump Tower starting with the May 31 payment of $72,800. The Trump campaign paid $110,684 in rent on June 9, and $169,758 on July 10.

The campaign’s number of paid employees and consultants went from 166 in May, to 139 in June, to 172 in July. How many of those actually worked in Trump Tower cannot be determined from the FEC filings, although typically only a small fraction of a presidential campaign’s staff works in the headquarters building. Last autumn, only about a dozen of the campaign’s several dozen paid employees worked in Manhattan.

Trump continues to fly to campaign events on his personal Boeing 757 airliner, even though the aging jet burns some $10,000 in fuel every hour. That has made air travel one of the biggest expense categories for his campaign. In July alone, $495,000 went to Trump’s company that owns the plane.

Prior to May, three-quarters of the $59 million spent by Trump’s campaign had come out of his own pocket ― meaning that whatever Trump charged his campaign for rent was largely coming from Trump himself.

That situation is now entirely reversed. Trump’s money makes up a tiny percentage of his campaign’s spending. The bulk now comes from outside donors, both small-dollar givers and those writing maximum-limit checks of $2,700.

“Nobody cares when you’re spending your own money, but when you’re spending the donor’s $27, that could cause problems,” the RNC member said, adding that small donors especially may not be sympathetic to Trump’s extravagance. “Most campaigns run on a much tighter budget.”

For many months, Trump’s campaign prided itself on its low-rent operation. It invited reporters in to tour its headquarters on the fifth floor of Trump Tower that had once been used as production offices for “The Apprentice” TV show, which starred Trump. Photos and video from those tours show work space with unfinished ceilings, makeshift drywall partitions, and only a few campaign workers.

Commercial real estate is available in the midtown Manhattan neighborhood in the range of $70 per square foot annually, although Trump has charged more than that. Trump Tower rented 9,000 feet of office space in December at $120 per square foot, but has been unable to rent a 15,000 square-foot office that includes six terraces overlooking Fifth Avenue, even at a discounted rent of $90 per square foot.

Democrat Hillary Clinton has been leasing two entire floors in a Brooklyn office building totaling 80,000 square feet since the start of her campaign. The rent for that space has been about $212,000 per month. Her campaign staff is also several times the size of Trump’s, numbering more than 700 for the better part of a year.

(08-24-2016, 09:04 AM)michaelsean Wrote: Is there a law on how much you can charge your campaign for something? Seems like an easy way to turn your campaign fund into a slush fund if there isn't.

(08-24-2016, 06:58 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Well, speaking of finances...  Isn't this a cute little, well timed diversion from the Clinton Foundation selling access and favors scandal.

(08-24-2016, 09:53 PM)GMDino Wrote: You mean the story about how they have no proof she gave favors despite donations and requests?

Why would they want to divert from that?  

(08-24-2016, 09:58 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Even though there findings haven't been completely investigated yet, there is enough for the average person to notice the correlation between large donations and getting face to face meetings.  I mean, I'm sure that it is all circumstantial, whatever are they talking about??

(08-24-2016, 06:58 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: ...the Clinton Foundation selling access and favors scandal.

Quote:Donald Trump Used Campaign Donations to Buy $55,000 of His Own Book


FEC rules dictate the Republican nominee must forgo royalties on the book’s sales, or else the $55,000 purchase at Barnes & Noble was illegal.

Donald Trump used his campaign funds to buy thousands of copies of his own book at retail cost, simultaneously diverting donor money back into his pockets while artificially boosting his sales figures. It’s a tactic that may be illegal, campaign finance experts say.

On May 10, the Trump campaign paid Barnes & Noble $55,055, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission. That amounts to more than 3,500 copies of the hardcover version of Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, or just over 5,000 copies of the renamed paperback release, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America.

A spokesperson for the Republican nominee told The Daily Beast the books were purchased “as part of gifting at the convention, which we have to do.” Sure enough, delegates in attendance at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July were given canvas tote bags, stamped with the Trump slogan, and filled with copies of Crippled America, as well as Kleenex and Make America Great Again! cups, hats, and T-shirts. Delegates were also given plastic fetus figurines.

The Republican National Committee did not respond when asked to confirm that its presidential candidate was required to spend tens of thousands in campaign funds on copies of his own book. And a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, asked if they’d ever done something similar, said, “We think we’ve probably purchased a copy or two just to have in the office, but the campaign has never purchased her book in bulk or anything close to that.”

Paul Ryan (not that one), of the nonpartisan nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, said that Trump would have to forgo accepting royalties for sales on the book in order for the transaction to be legal, under Federal Election Committee rules.

“It’s fine for a candidate’s book to be purchased by his committee, but it’s impermissible to receive royalties from the publisher,” Ryan said. “That amounts to an illegal conversion of campaign funds to personal use. There’s a well established precedent from the FEC that funds from the campaign account can’t end up in your own pocket.”

When asked if Trump agreed to forgo royalties for sales of the book, the Trump campaign refused to comment on the record while representatives at Simon & Schuster, Trump’s publisher, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.


Federal campaign law dictates that campaign spending must not “result in the conversion of campaign funds to the personal use of the candidate or any other person.”



In 2014, the FEC issued an advisory opinion allowing GOP Rep. Paul Ryan to buy copies of his book The Way Forward from his publisher at a “discounted bulk rate”—provided there were no royalties paid to the Congressman.

“It may be the case for a candidate to instead donate those royalties to charity—that might be a permissible arrangement,” said the CLC’s Ryan. “But the bottom line is, no money of this $55,000 from the book can end up in Donald Trump’s pocket without violating federal law.”

For as long as Trump has been a presidential candidate, he has been finding ways to patronize his businesses and write it off as a political expense.

Previous FEC filings have revealed the Trump campaign spends millions utilizing Tag Air Inc., of which Trump is CEO, to travel by private jet. He also uses Trump buildings to house members of his staff and to host official events, and frequents the Trump Grill in the lobby of Trump Tower.

No other presidential candidate in history has had access to such a vast universe of self-titled business to frequent during their campaign.

Executives, celebrities, and politicians have long purchased copies of their books in bulk; many publishers even get high-profile authors to agree to buy a certain number of copies before a contract for the book is even signed. But Trump’s arrangement appears to be very different. Ben Bruton, who has worked in publishing public relations for 25 years, called the way in which the books were bought “suspicious.”

“What any author that I know would most likely do is go to the publisher and say, ‘I want a bunch of these in the goody bag.’ [The author would] come to the publisher and say he needed books for a charity or an event, and we would donate 500 all the time. And we’ll sell more to you at a 40 percent discount,“ said Bruton.

“The red flag, I think, would be that they’re trying to get back on The [New York] Times Best Sellers list, or they’re trying to buy them at retail for royalties.”

Bruton said Trump’s sales would only count toward best-seller lists if he purchased them from a brick-and-mortar store like Barnes & Noble.

“I’ve worked at four different of the major six publishing houses and a lot of times people want to buy a bunch of books to get on the list. You can’t do it from Amazon. You can’t buy them from the publisher,” said Bruton. “Only buying from place likes Barnes & Noble at full price is looked at as sales.”

The bulk purchase practice is not uncommon with right-wing campaign books. In 2014, a Tea Party PAC bought $427,000 worth of Senate hopeful Mark Levin’s then-four-year-old book Liberty or Tyranny in an attempt to make it a best-seller.

The curators of the Times’ list are hip to bulk purchases and weigh heavily against them, Bruton said. “That’s how the Times keeps that sort of in check, so you can’t just buy your way onto the Best Sellers list,“ he said. It may be why Trump’s book—which was released in November of last year—failed to chart on the Non-Fiction chart that week, or the Politics list that month.

“However, I do believe that was definitely an attempt to both make money and to get onto the best-seller list,” said Bruton.

Still, Trump has continued on the offensive this week, calling for a special investigation against his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and her family’s foundation, which he claims is “crooked.”

On a Monday morning edition of Fox & Friends, Trump called Bill and Hillary Clinton “grifters” and said that “the whole thing with them is a scam.”

(08-24-2016, 09:58 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Even though there findings haven't been completely investigated yet, there is enough for the average person to notice the correlation between large donations and getting face to face meetings.  I mean, I'm sure that it is all circumstantial, whatever are they talking about??

(08-25-2016, 09:35 AM)JustWinBaby Wrote: People rail about lobbyists all the time....but they'll defend the Clinton foundation.   And they rail about rich people...but crickets how the Clintons became worth north of 9 figures thanks to politics.

Nothing to see here, move along.

(08-24-2016, 10:15 PM)GMDino Wrote: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/24/donald-trump-used-campaign-donations-to-buy-55-000-of-his-own-book.html?via=twitter_page

(08-25-2016, 11:00 AM)PhilHos Wrote: Meh, I'm sure Trump didn't INTEND to break the law. 

(08-25-2016, 09:35 AM)JustWinBaby Wrote: People rail about lobbyists all the time....but they'll defend the Clinton foundation.   And they rail about rich people...but crickets how the Clintons became worth north of 9 figures thanks to politics.

Nothing to see here, move along.

(08-25-2016, 10:12 AM)GMDino Wrote: Again, if there is proof take it out of their hide.  Until then its ANOTHER accusation that hasn't been proven.  That's not a defense of Clinton, that's the fact.

(08-25-2016, 07:29 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Oh, sure, nothing unusual about a couple that left the WH "dead broke" and are now worth an estimated $110M, almost all from book deals no one wants to read and speeches.

Quote:Hillary Clinton - $200K

Commanding around $200,000, Clinton recently came under fire for her $250,000 speaking fee at an upcoming UNLV fundraiser. Hilary told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in June that her family was “dead broke” upon leaving White House.

Bill Clinton - $200K

Though he is typically paid around $200,000, there are some notable exceptions. Swedish Telecom firm Ericsson reportedly paid the former president $750,000 for one speech in 2011. The Washington Post published a comprehensive review of the astounding $104.9 million Clinton has amassed in speaking fees since leaving office.

(08-25-2016, 07:29 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: You start a thread about Trump raising his office rent a hundred thousand dollars, but your lips are sealed when it comes to the obvious grifting that has lined the Clinton pockets with over $100 MILLION.

Quote:Trump's kids are cashing in on his campaign


Republican Donald Trump has so far paid $7.7 million in campaign contributions to his own companies and children, according to a filing with the Federal Elections Commission, and as the campaign transitions to the general election those payments are increasing. In May, they totaled at least $1.1 million—nearly 20 percent of all campaign spending that month—and in July, another $800,000 came into the Trump brood.


Campaign finance laws on the topic are hazy and contradictory, largely because no candidate for federal office has ever had such a sprawling business empire that could be employed for a campaign. The FEC allows candidates to rent themselves their own office space—as the Trump campaign does at Trump Tower—but bans them from collecting royalties on any memoirs purchased by the campaign. Money ultimately flows back to the candidate in both cases but the FEC has issued divergent rules.


Nevertheless, when it comes to payments to relatives or family-owned companies, the Trump campaign is breaking new ground. "The extent of Mr. Trump's use of his own companies for goods and services during the campaign is unprecedented," says Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance expert and the Deputy Executive Director of The Campaign Legal Center. "It has the potential to transfer donations to himself and his children."



In July alone, Trump's campaign paid $169,758.33 in rent to Trump Tower Corporation LLC, $48,239.77 for rent and catering at Trump National Golf Club in Weschester, $1,000 to Trump Restaurants LLC, and $428.53 worth of Trump's bottled water Trump Ice. In May, Trump's campaign spent $3,938.58 at the vineyard run by his son Eric. Campaign dollars are also funneled to allies of Trump's children. Each month, the campaign spends millions on apparel like the "Make America Great Again" trucker hats. The manufacturer, Ace Specialties, is owned by Christl Mahfouz, a board member on Eric Trump's charitable foundation.


The intertwining of campaign and business takes shape in other ways. The day after daughter Ivanka gave her speech at the Republican convention wearing a dress from her eponymous fashion line, she tweeted about where people could buy it (Nordstroms.com and Macys.com quickly sold out).


The laws aren't entirely clear on who can be paid for what kind of services to a campaign. For the Federal Elections Commission to get involved it would have to be asked by the campaign or to investigate on its own initiative. Both scenarios are unlikely. "The FEC isn't going after anyone for anything these days," says Mr. Ryan. 



If things continue, Trump and his children might make good on their father's prediction in 2000 that "it's very possibly that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it."

(08-25-2016, 07:29 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Oh, sure, nothing unusual about a couple that left the WH "dead broke" and are now worth an estimated $110M, almost all from book deals no one wants to read and speeches.

You start a thread about Trump raising his office rent a hundred thousand dollars, but your lips are sealed when it comes to the obvious grifting that has lined the Clinton pockets with over $100 MILLION.