Trump Moved More Than $1 Million From His Political Groups To His Private Business After Losing The Election

In the months immediately following the election, much of the money came via Trump’s official campaign committee, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. On December 1, 2020, the committee paid $38,000 in rent to Trump Tower Commercial LLC, the entity through which the former president owns space inside Trump Tower. Fifteen days later, another $38,000 of rent moved from the campaign committee to that same LLC. The committee also made two payments of $3,000 at about the same time to an entity named Trump Restaurants LLC. The former president, who is worth an estimated $3 billion, also owns 100% of that company, according to an analysis of documents his business submitted to federal and local officials while he was president. Between the election and the end of 2020, Trump’s campaign committee handed over $113,000 to Trump’s business.

In the New Year, Trump didn’t really shut down his campaign committee. Instead, he renamed it, turning it into the Make America Great Again PAC. Beginning on January 4, 2021, that PAC started funneling money to the Trump Organization, handing $8,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection by the end of the month. The group also wrote rent checks to the same entities that the campaign had been previously paying—$38,000 to Trump Tower Commercial LLC every month or so and often another $3,000 to Trump Restaurants LLC. It’s unclear why the Make America Great Again PAC still needed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of rent in 2021, given that the election took place in 2020. Representatives of the PAC and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. By the end of February 2022, the Make America Great Again PAC had paid $526,000 to Trump’s companies, according to the review of Federal Election Commission filings.

It’s unclear why the Make America Great Again PAC still needed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of rent in 2021, given that the election took place in 2020.

While the campaign committee and its rebranded offshoot cut big rent checks, other Trump political groups splurged at the former president’s hotels. Nine days after the election, a joint-fundraising committee named Trump Victory, which gathered funds for the Trump campaign and several state-level Republican groups, paid $294,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection.