Complaint: Trump Making Illegal Secret Payments, Including To His Own Family

“The money is being laundered through corporations run by top Trump campaign officials,” said Brendan Fischer, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center. “That has the effect of keeping the public in the dark as to a big chunk of Trump campaign spending.” “This scheme violated the law and undermines the public’s right to know. What precisely is being hidden is unknown. We don’t know for sure,” Fischer said. The Campaign Legal Center’s complaint says that previous rulings from the FEC make clear that paying vendors to perform services without itemizing sub-contractors and employees is only permissible when those payments are made in “arms-length” transactions. Under the Trump campaign’s theory that it can pay a lump sum to a private company like Parscale’s, there is nothing stopping it from funneling all of its spending that way each month, with the public getting zero details on how any of it is being spent, Fischer said. He acknowledged that previous campaigns have used similar entities in the past — the presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 created a firm, American Rambler, to buy all of its television advertising — but nothing on this scale. “The Trump campaign has taken it to another level,” Fischer said.

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