Several senior Republican officials are concerned that Donald Trump’s expected takeover of the RNC will ultimately pave the way for the committee to once again cover his legal bills.
Those fears come in the aftermath of Trump endorsing a trio of officials, including his daughter-in-law, to take on top roles at the RNC. While those endorsements have been well-received by many committee members — who note that it is customary for a presidential candidate to put his imprint on the party’s main campaign apparatus — others fear a potential misallocation of party resources.
Henry Barbour, a Mississippi committeeman, said he believed “most RNC members will go along” with Trump’s vision for the committee, “unless there is a play to use RNC funds for President Trump’s legal bills.”
Oscar Brock, another committee member who has been critical of Trump, said the budget that the RNC passed two weeks ago during a meeting in Las Vegas did not allocate any money to cover Trump’s legal fees. But he acknowledged the possibility of the committee eventually amending its financial plan to do so, were Trump to ask — a measure Brock, the Tennessee committeeman and a member of the RNC budget committee, said he would not support.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for the committee to pay the legal bills for things done outside the work of the committee,” Brock said.
Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, called fears about the RNC paying Trump’s legal bills “manufactured.” Rather than the committee covering the cost of Trump’s attorney fees, the money would be drawn from other sources, including Trump’s leadership PAC Save America and the former president himself, who has been paying some legal bills out of pocket, according to senior advisers to the campaign.
The RNC spent nearly $2 million on two legal firms working on Trump cases in 2021 and 2022 before stopping once Trump jumped into the presidential campaign. The committee will continue to have a legal fund to pay for recount efforts, lawsuits and typical party legal business.
Trump has large visions for reshaping the RNC.
Chief among them is that the RNC will bolster its efforts on “election integrity.” That had become a point of contention between the RNC and the former president, who believed that not enough resources were being put into efforts to prevent fraud, although the committee created a “Election Integrity Department.” So far in the 2024 election cycle, the RNC has filed 78 election integrity lawsuits in 23 states, according to a committee spokesperson.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/14/trump-rnc-legal-bills-00141540