Close associates of President Donald Trump who have been swept up in the ongoing Russia investigations may soon receive financial help to pay off mounting legal fees, it was reported on Saturday.
The Office of Government Ethics released documents this week which show that a group of Washington, DC lawyers are in the process of forming the Patriot Legal Expense Fund Trust, POLITICO reported.
The fund will raise money for former and current officials who either worked or are working for the Trump campaign, the transition, and the administration.
These former and current Trump associates are faced with rising legal fees as they are called to answer questions before investigators from both houses of Congress as well as the team working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Mueller, the House of Representatives, and the Senate are each conducting probes into the extent of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Close associates of President Donald Trump (seen above in Sterling, Virginia on Friday) who have been swept up in the ongoing Russia investigations may soon receive financial help to pay off mounting legal fees, it was reported on Saturday
Investigators are trying to determine whether officials associated with the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow to tilt the election toward the Republican real estate developer from New York.
Trump has denied there was any collusion with Russia and says the investigation by Mueller is ‘a hoax.’
So far, more than 20 White House staffers have spoken to Mueller voluntarily, according to POLITICO.
Of those 20, eight of them work in the White House counsel’s office.
Trump’s personal lawyer, John Down, wrote a memo last week which said that 17 campaign staffers and 11 others ‘affiliated in some way or another with the campaign’ have volunteered to give statements to either the special counsel or the congressional committees.
It is unclear how much money has been raised or what assets the fund currently holds, according to ABC News.
Retaining a lawyer to help guide through the legal maze brought on by the Russia investigations costs a lot of money.
Last quarter, the Trump campaign spent $1.1million on legal fees related to the Russian probes, ABC News reported.
That is a significant sum of money considering that the campaign spent a total of $2.8million.
According to Reuters, Trump’s re-election campaign ended 2017 with $22million in the bank. In the fourth quarter alone, it took in $6.9million in contributions.
The fund is intended to serve only those individuals who were or are members of the Trump administration and the transition teams.
Trump himself and his immediate family are not allowed to receive aid from the fund, as per ethics rules.
This past September, Reuters reported that Trump is using money donated to his re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee to pay for his lawyers in the probe of alleged Russian interference in the US election.
These former and current Trump associates are faced with rising legal fees as they are called to answer questions before investigators from both houses of Congress as well as the team working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller (seen above)
CNN reported that the Republican National Committee paid in August more than $230,000 to cover some of Trump’s legal fees related to the probe.
RNC spokesperson Cassie Smedile confirmed to Reuters that Trump’s lead lawyer, Dowd, received $100,000 from the RNC and that the RNC also paid $131,250 to the Constitutional Litigation and Advocacy Group, the law firm where Jay Sekulow, another of Trump’s lawyers, is a partner.
The US Federal Election Commission allows the use of private campaign funds to pay legal bills arising from being a candidate or elected official.
While previous presidential campaigns have used these funds to pay for routine legal matters such as ballot access disputes and compliance requirements, Trump would be the first US president in the modern campaign finance era to use such funds to cover the costs of responding to a criminal probe, said election law experts.
Smedile said the RNC payments to Trump’s lawyers were ‘from a pre-existing legal proceedings account and do not reduce by a dime the resources we can put towards our political work.’
It was not clear how Trump’s legal costs related to the Russia probe would be allocated between the campaign and the RNC, one of the sources said.
Dowd declined to say how the president’s legal bills were being paid, adding: ‘That’s none of your business.’