President Trump’s re-election campaign raised $15.2 million in the last three months of last year, and spent $1.2 million on legal fees — with much of the cash going to law firms responding to investigations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election — according to campaign finance reports. The reports, filed with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday evening, indicate that Mr. Trump’s campaign and two fund-raising committees it formed with the Republican National Committee — Trump Victory and Trump Make America Great Again — entered this year with $32.3 million in the bank. That is an unusually large nest egg for a president at this point in a first term, reflecting an earlier and more aggressive start to re-election fund-raising that began almost immediately after Mr. Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in a campaign in which she drastically outspent him. Mr. Trump and his team seem determined not to repeat that.
They have worked to woo major donors of the sort who were slow to embrace Mr. Trump — paying to host fund-raising events at upscale venues like his hotel here. One of the joint committees paid $7,000 last month for catering and facility rental at Wynn Las Vegas, the casino hotel founded by Stephen Wynn, who had served as the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee until stepping down last week after being accused of a yearslong pattern of sexual misconduct.
The top donor to Mr. Trump was the New York private equity executive Stephen A. Schwarzman, who gave $344,000 to Trump Victory. The Dallas oil heir Al G. Hill Jr. donated $200,000 in October, before dying in December at 72. A considerable portion of the money raised in the fourth quarter, more than $4 million, came from supporters who gave $200 or less.
Full Article: About 25% of Trump’s Re-election Spending Continues to Go to Lawyers – The New York Times.