Trump Pocketing Funds Tapped for Georgia Senate Runoffs

Donald Trump is a desperate man, and as he faces an unavoidable Electoral College loss to Joe Biden on Wednesday, he’s still throwing everything he can at the wall to see if he can make anything stick. Just days after being caught on tape begging and then threatening Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to “find 11,000 votes” to help him overturn the state’s Presidential election results, Trump is still asking his devoted fanbase to send money in support of the two Republican Senators running for re-election.

And while Trump has invoked the Georgia Senate runoffs dozens of times over the past month while raising money for his $100 million-plus “leadership” political committee — but has not reported spending a dime on those races.

The Trump campaign boasted last month that he had raised over $207 million since Election Day. yet could not account for any payouts. But a HuffPost analysis of  “independent expenditures” reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for Tuesday’s election found that “114 different groups have spent $172.6 million in the two races that will determine control of the Senate for the next two years.” They range from the Senate Leadership Fund, the superPAC run by allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that spent $31.3 million, to the tiny Ohio-based Heroes PAC, which spent $7,600 for digital ads on behalf of incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

So, so, so, so, SO dishonest.

Trump has been raising millions of dollars, for weeks, off the Georgia Senate runoffs. This one just went out minutes ago to his small-donor list.

So how much has he spent so far on Georgia?

Let's see… oh, right. Zero.https://t.co/o8sVn1mriI pic.twitter.com/S8WaUMmUQa

— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) January 5, 2021

None of these monies have been actually used to help either Senate candidate, however, and it’s assumed that Trump is actually continuing to grift his base in order to pay potential legal fees he most likely will incur as he faces prosecution in New York in multiple investigations and lawsuits that have already been filed.

By law, Trump’s committee can only give each GOP candidate $2,800 directly for the runoff, while the RNC can give Loeffler and Perdue just $5,000 each. Both groups can spend without limit to support those two or oppose the Democrats, so long as they do not coordinate with the candidates. By mid-December, the RNC had only reported $3.1 million in such independent spending for the runoff, and Trump had not reported anything at all. Reports detailing fundraising and expenses by his campaign and Save America for the entire month of December are not due to the FEC until Jan. 31.