Can Trump use campaign donations to pay his legal fees?

Bloomberg reports that Donald Trump continues to dominate, both in the opinion polls and collecting campaign funds, despite his mounting legal problems.

Trump refused to join the first Republican primary debate in Milwaukee and instead opted to be interviewed by Tucker Carlson at X (formerly Twitter), something that only the former US President can afford to do.

According to the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Donald Trump holds a 40-point lead over Florida governor Ron DeSantis, his biggest rival.

Bloomberg also highlights that Trump has raised three times the amount of money in donations than DeSantis, collecting over 72 million US dollars by late June.

At the same time, DeSantis has only collected 17 million US dollars. Following DeSantis in donations are former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.

Trump’s ongoing legal woes, instead of harming him, have only strengthened him in the polls and the coffers.

NBC News highlights that the online donations to Trump’s campaign peaked after every indictment, getting 13.5 million US dollars the week after he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for paying hush money to an adult film star.

Meanwhile, Reuters explains that the question about whether the former Republican President can make use of campaign donations to pay off his legal fees is a tricky one.

Since Trump is fighting criminal charges while seeking to run in the 2024 Presidential Election, it is possible to argue that covering his legal fees are necessary expenses for his campaign.

Politico reporter Jessica Piper told NPR that Trump’s leadership Political Action Committee, Save America, had spent over 20 million US dollars on legal fees in the first half of 2023.

Although Trump skipped the first Republican debate in Milwaukee, one can’t deny he was probably the elephant in the room for DeSantis, Haley, Pence, and others. One they can’t defeat individually and could tramp over them at any moment.

“We have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America”, Nikki Haley claimed during the debate. “We can win a general election that way”.