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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-consultants-rich-reelection-money_n_5eb1dae5c5b62b850f93abb3)
WASHINGTON ― The bad news for President Donald Trump: He may well lose reelection later this year.
The good news for his top campaign staff: They will wind up really rich either way.
Brad Parscale, whom Trump named to run his 2020 effort in early 2018, has already collected $38.9 million through his companies from Trump's various reelection committees between January 2017 and the end of March, according to a HuffPost analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.
Gerrit Lansing's payment processing company, which he started while a staffer at the National Republican Congressional Committee and continued to run while he worked at the Republican National Committee, has taken in $1.7 million. Katie Walsh, briefly a Trump White House aide and a former RNC chief of staff, has received $877,424 through her firms. And Richard Walters, who at age 30 is the current chief of staff, makes $244,943 a year in salary but last year was paid an additional $135,000 through his own consulting firm. Since the Trump presidency began, he has been paid a total of $755,324.
For Parscale, who just a few years ago was designing websites in San Antonio for Trump's properties, among other clients, the sudden wealth has afforded him a $2.4 million waterfront house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a pair of million-dollar condos, a brand new $400,000 boat, and another half-million dollars in luxury cars, including a Range Rover and a Ferrari.
“This thing has been a large criminal enterprise. It's like that scene in the ‘Goodfellas' after the heist,” said Republican consultant Stuart Stevens, a veteran of the George W. Bush and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns. “Dishing out furs to mob bosses' girlfriends and wives.”
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Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., are both receiving $15,000 a month of campaign money that is routed through Parscale's companies. Parscale defended the practice to HuffPost last month ― “I can pay them however I want to pay them” ― but he declined to elaborate.
“I think the general public would be interested to know what members of Trump's extended family are being paid by campaign donors,” said Paul Ryan, a campaign finance legal expert at the watchdog group Common Cause.
How many others are paid in a similarly secret manner is not publicly knowable. For example, Trump's first 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told HuffPost at a February campaign rally that he had rejoined the campaign last year as a senior adviser ― the same title held by both Lara Trump and Guilfoyle. But he also does not appear in FEC records, and neither he nor the campaign would respond to HuffPost queries about the matter.
Of course, if he, like Lara Trump and Guilfoyle, is making money off the Trump reelection with no public disclosure, he is certainly not alone. Many tens of millions of dollars in payments have gone to consulting firms that in turn purchase internet ads, television spots and mass mailings ― but also keep undisclosed percentages for their principals.
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But if campaign staff and consultants are enriching themselves thanks to Trump donors, it is no different than what Trump himself has been doing since even before taking office: paying himself millions of dollars for use of his own properties.
A HuffPost analysis of FEC data shows that Trump's campaign, the RNC and their related joint committees have spent $6.4 million at Trump hotels and resorts from January 2017 through March 31. That includes $37,542 per month in rent for space at Trump Tower in Manhattan, even though the campaign is based in a high-rise in Arlington, Virginia, and just a handful of staff use the New York office.
That practice of funneling donor money into his own pocket began in 2016, right after he became the presumptive Republican nominee and began raising large amounts of GOP cash. Trump immediately quintupled the rent he was charging his campaign at Trump Tower, from $35,458 per month to $169,758. He also began billing the campaign five- and six-figure sums for use of his hotels and golf courses for hosting fundraisers.
Yet for all the reelection campaign's spending, there remains the question of what has been achieved. Trump opened his reelection campaign literally the day he took office ― more than two years earlier than his recent predecessors began their reelection efforts.
Trump's approval ratings, while slightly higher than they were at the lowest points of his presidency, have remained stuck in the low 40s. While they edged upward a few points after the coronavirus pandemic struck in a classic “rally 'round the flag” effect, that disappeared quickly after Trump staged nightly two-hour briefings in which he repeatedly aired his numerous grievances and unusual medical theories.
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