The decision signals a potential money crisis for Trump, who has so far refused to pay his own voluminous bills directly and has also avoided creating a legal-defence fund for himself and people who have become entangled in the various investigations related to him.
It comes as Trump runs a campaign while under indictment in two jurisdictions and, soon, potentially a third, while also paying the legal fees of a number of witnesses who are close to him or who work for him. It is unclear how much money was refunded. But the refund was sought as the PAC, Save America, spent more than $40 million in legal fees incurred by Trump and witnesses in various legal cases related to him this year alone, according to another person familiar with the matter.
The numbers will be part of the Save America Federal Election Commission filing that is expected to be made public late Monday. That $40 million was in addition to $16 million that Save America spent in the previous two years on legal fees. Since then, Trump has been indicted twice and has expanded the size of his legal team, and his two co-defendants in the case related to his retention of classified material work for him. The total legal spending is roughly $56 million.
The PAC was the entity in which Trump had parked the more than $100 million raised when he sought small-dollar donations after losing the 2020 election. Trump claimed he needed the support to fight widespread fraud in the race. Officials, including some with his campaign, turned up no evidence of widespread fraud. Trump used some of that $100 million for other politicians in 2022, but he also used it to pay more than $16 million in legal fees, most of them related to investigations into him, and at least $10 million of which was for his own personal fees.
