Trump PAC has not used any of the $75M its raised this year to help fund election audits: report

Former President Trump’s leadership PAC has not yet used any of the roughly $75 million raised to help finance election reviews, The Washington Post reported Thursday. 

The PAC was formed after the 2020 election to help fund the Trump team’s efforts to challenge results.

Yet people familiar with the PAC’s finances told the news outlet that the committee has held onto much of the money, while a portion has been used to pay for some of Trump’s expenses, including travel and legal costs, as well as staff pay. 

The PAC, which will need to publicly disclose its fundraising and spending for the first half of the year by July 31, previously reported in Federal Election Commission filings earlier this year that it had collected nearly $31.2 million by the end of 2020. 

The details shared by the sources, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity to describe the group’s finances, come as Trump has continued to advance false claims of a stolen 2020 election, and has through his PAC sent out statements supporting election audits, including the ongoing one in Arizona’s Maricopa County. 

“There was no victory here, or in any other of the Swing States either,” the former president wrote in one of the messages shared by the Save America PAC. 

The president is scheduled to speak this Saturday at an event in Phoenix, titled “Protect our Elections Rally,” hosted by the Charlie Kirk-founded conservative group Turning Point Action. 

While the GOP-dominated Arizona Senate has said it will provide $150,000 in taxpayer spending for the audit, the actual costs are expected to be much higher, with the remainder being covered by private donations. 

The Post reported Thursday that a Trump spokeswoman did not respond to questions regarding the PAC’s finances and whether it plans on funding any ballot review efforts. 

The Hill has reached out to representatives for Trump for comment. 

A Monday poll from OH Predictive Insights found that 62 percent of Arizona Republicans believe that Trump will receive more 2020 election votes after the state’s audit is complete, despite the fact that no evidence has emerged to substantiate Trump’s claims of widespread fraud. 

Republicans in other states have followed Arizona in launching or proposing recounts, including Texas, where a group of state GOP lawmakers introduced legislation this week calling for the hiring of an outside expert to conduct a forensic audit of counties with populations greater than 415,000.

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Veronica Degraffenreid said Tuesday that a county’s voting machines that had been subjected to an audit were decertified as a result of the probe.