Donald Trump’s PAC Allegedly Sent Millions to Help Ivanka Trump With Her Legal Bills

According to a Business Insider story, a political fundraising organization affiliated with the late President Donald Trump has transferred $2.3 million to cover former first daughter Ivanka Trump's legal expenses. As per the report, a further $5.3 million was expended by the PAC on the legal firm Robert & Robert, which acted on behalf of the former President's three eldest children, Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr., as well as the Trump Organization in a variety of lawsuits that seem unrelated to Trump's candidacy for president in 2024.

Trump has been misleading Save America's funders for years, according to Robert Maguire, the research director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a group that monitors campaign money. He revealed to the outlet, "In 2020, he raised tens of millions of dollars for the PAC by making baseless claims of a stolen election and casting the PAC as an 'Official Election Defense Fund'. Since then, the committee has largely become a vehicle for paying his, his family's, and his associates' legal bills, while also channeling tens of millions to a pro-Trump super PAC," as per Raw Story.

As per the outlet, Save America paid $1,303,667.11 in total to the legal firm Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders and $1,042,479 to Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick in 2023. In New York Attorney General Letitia James's extensive lawsuit concerning the Trump Organization's finances, which included Trump, his three children, and other executives, both companies stepped in as Ivanka's 'exclusive' legal representatives.

According to court documents, Michael K. Kellogg of the Washington, DC-based Kellogg Hansen company represented Ivanka starting in September 2022. Reid M. Figel, a colleague, joined in January 2023. At the time, Figel claimed, as per the court documents, that since Ivanka left the Trump Organization in 2017, she should be treated differently from her father and brothers. As the lawsuit neared trial, Kellogg and Figel resigned from defending Ivanka the next month.

Troutman Pepper lawyer Bennett S. Moskowitz, who had already defended the executors of Jeffrey Epstein's estate against rape claims, appeared in court to represent Ivanka. In June, his associate, Ketan D. Bhirud, became a member of Ivanka's legal group in the same timeframe as her withdrawal from the case. As per emails subsequently filed in a court exhibit, the office insisted that she be made a witness in the lawsuit and even mentioned that her attorneys were 'being paid by Mr. Trump's Save America PAC along with the other Defendants' as justification for making her testify.

Moskowitz attempted to have the trial subpoena quashed in October, after the trial had started, on the grounds that she was not within the court's jurisdiction and had not been properly served. He further said that it would be very difficult for her to go to New York for testimony since she lives in Florida and has three children who attend school. This month, Judge Arthur Engoron will determine the lawsuit in which New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $370 million in penalties and the liquidation of the Trump Organization.