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The money is going to help Trump defend himself and his business against two investigations in New York, one civil and one criminal, being conducted concurrently by the New York Attorney General and the Manhattan District Attorney. Both probes center on whether Trump and the Trump Organization committed financial fraud by wildly deflating and inflating the valuation of their properties to alternately pay lower taxes and secure more favorable loans.
But what’s most striking about the arrangement is both the size of the GOP’s investment and the fact that the party is defending what Trump did as a private citizen, having nothing to do with his tenure in public office.
The GOP is trying to gloss over that last part by touting Trump’s claim that the probes are political and, therefore, it makes sense for the party to support Trump.
“The RNC’s Executive Committee approved paying for certain legal expenses that relate to politically motivated legal proceedings waged against President Trump,” said GOP spokeswoman Emma Vaughn. “As a leader of our party, defending President Trump and his record of achievement is critical to the GOP. It is entirely appropriate for the RNC to continue assisting in fighting back against the Democrats’ never ending witch hunt and attacks on him.”
Whatever. The Republican Party is now emptying GOP coffers in order to defend potentially illegal practices that Trump engaged in in his private capacity, to his personal benefit. Party officials can tell themselves whatever they want, but what a bunch of idiots.
“To pay the legal fees for someone who isn’t a candidate, and isn’t an employee — I’ve never seen that happen,” said Brett Kappel, a campaign lawyer at the firm Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg.
The GOP’s real motivation is clearly to keep Trump—an exceedingly irascible and capricious soul—happy. The backdrop to the entire discussion is the fact that Trump has been hanging the possibility of starting a third party over their heads ever since that brief moment in January when some Republicans dared to admit he was responsible for sparking the deadly insurgency on Jan. 6. Party officials also argue that he’s the GOP’s single biggest fundraising draw, and they can’t afford to anger him.
Sounds a lot like the rationale a bunch of GOP candidates have offered for willingly shelling out steep fees to Trump in order to hold fundraisers at his properties. Trump is effectively fleecing them, but they’re desperate for the clout and fundraising capacity they gain from being closely associated with him.
“The lesson is ultimately you don’t make a deal with the devil, but if you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound,” former GOP spokesperson Douglas Heye said of the party’s predicament. “They want their party to win, and they want to take back the House and the Senate. Having Donald Trump either on your side, or on the sidelines as a non-malicious, nonmalignant figure, is what you hope for. You know he could take you down at any time.”
The GOP’s in for a lot of pounds—an indefinite amount, in fact. And the major gamble in their calculation is the notion that Trump could ever be neutralized to the point of being “on the sidelines as a non-malicious, nonmalignant figure.” That was the great hope of Senate Republicans before Trump’s constant and baseless election fraud grousing sank them in Georgia’s two Senate runoffs earlier this year that ultimately secured Democrats’ Senate majority.
Now, Trump is busy staging a replay of that losing strategy in Georgia’s gubernatorial race. More power to him.
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