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Trump Documents Case New Charges for Trump The Indictment, Annotated Where Documents Were Found Trump Investigations Tracker

Trump Team Creates Legal-Defense

Fund to Cover His Allies’ Bills
With investigations and legal fees piling up, a fund is planned to
help witnesses and defendants. The former president’s legal bills
are not expected to be included, however.

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Donald J. Trump’s political action committee has spent over $40 million on lawyers in
the first half of 2023. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

By Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher

July 30, 2023

Former President Donald J. Trump’s team is creating a legal-

efense fund to handle some of the crush of legal bills stemming
from the investigations and criminal indictments involving him and
a number of employees and associates, according to two people
with knowledge of the matter.

The fund, which is expected to be called the Patriot Legal Defense

Fund Inc., will be led by Michael Glassner, a longtime Trump
political adviser, according to the people familiar with the planning,
who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. Another Trump aide
who worked at the Trump Organization and then in Mr. Trump’s
administration, Lynne Patton, will also be involved, the people said.

It is unclear how broad a group of people the legal-defense fund

will cover, but one person said it was not expected to cover Mr.
Trump’s own legal bills. In recent months Mr. Trump’s political
action committee has paid legal bills for him and several witnesses,
spending over $40 million on lawyers in the first half of 2023.

But a wide swath of people have become entangled in the various

Trump-related criminal investigations, both as witnesses — of
which there are many who work for Mr. Trump personally or did in
the White House — as well as defendants.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, said that the Justice
Department had “targeted innocent Americans associated with
President Trump,” and that “to combat these heinous actions” and
“protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent
their lives from being completely destroyed, a new legal defense
fund will help pay for their legal fees to ensure they have
representation against unlawful harassment.”

Mr. Trump’s PAC, Save America, has been a focus of one of the
investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, who has had at
least two grand juries looking at Mr. Trump and his allies and
advisers. Mr. Smith’s team has questioned why some lawyers for
specific witnesses are being paid, as well as whether aides to Mr.
Trump and Republicans knew Mr. Trump had lost the election but
continued to raise money off his debunked claims.

The creation of the legal-defense fund could ease some of the

financial pressure on Save America, which was severe enough that
it requested a refund of the $60 million it had transferred to a pro-

super PAC late last year .

Michael Glassner, a longtime Trump political adviser, will lead what is expected to be
called the Patriot Legal Defense Fund Inc. Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

Mr. Trump now has two co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De
Oliveira , in the federal investigation into his retention of reams of
presidential material and classified documents after he left office.
Both men work for Mr. Trump; Mr. Nauta works for the Trump
campaign, and Mr. De Oliveira is the property manager at Mar-a-
Mr. Trump’s private club.

Last month, Mr. Trump appeared at a fund-raiser at his golf club in

Bedminster, N.J., for a group that assists those arrested in
connection with the Jan. 6 riot and their families. “I’m going to
make a contribution,” Mr. Trump told them, according to a video of
his remarks . That group’s name, the Patriot Freedom Project,
echoes the new name of Mr. Trump’s legal fund.

Mr. Trump had long resisted such an entity. For years, he told
people that only guilty people have legal-defense funds.

Mr. Trump, a wealthy businessman, has been using money parked

in Save America to pay legal bills for himself and a number of
witnesses in the four criminal investigations into his actions in and
out of office. Save America was created to house the more than
$100 million that Mr. Trump raised shortly after the November
2020 election, as he claimed he needed his supporters’ help to
combat widespread voter fraud.

No such widespread fraud was ever proved, but Mr. Trump had
tens of millions of dollars at his disposal. He cannot spend the
money directly on his 2024 presidential candidacy, but has been
using it for legal bills. Last year, he made the $60 million transfer to
the super PAC that is backing him, well before the refund request
was made.

In 2021 and 2022, Save America paid for Mr. Trump's political
operation while he was out of office and not an official candidate,
paying for staff members and rallies. It also picked up $16 million
in legal fees.

Mr. Trump’s rivals have been using the Save America legal
payments as an attack on him. And he appears to have recognized
it as a potential weak point: On Saturday evening, at a rally in Erie,

Pa., he said he would put whatever money he needs to put into his
campaign, if it comes to that.

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence

Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team
that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their
connections to Russia. More about Maggie Haberman
Shane Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief political
correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining The Times, he worked at Politico,
where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016 presidential campaign.
More about Shane Goldmacher

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Our Coverage of the Trump Documents Case

The Justice Department has filed federal criminal charges against former President
Donald Trump over his mishandling of classified documents.

The Indictment: Federal prosecutors said that Trump put national security secrets
at risk by mishandling classified documents and schemed to block the
government from reclaiming the material. Here’s a look at the evidence .

Obstruction: The Mueller report raised questions about whether Trump had
obstructed the inquiry into the ties between the former president’s 2016
campaign and Russia. With prosecutors adding new charges in the documents
case, the subject is back .

The Judge: Judge Aileen Cannon , a Trump appointee who showed favor to the
former president earlier in the investigation, has scant experience running
criminal trials Can she prove her critics wrong ?
.

The Trial: Cannon has set the trial’s start date for May 20, 2024 , taking a middle
position between the government’s request to go to trial in December and Trump’s
desire to push the proceeding until after the 2024 election.
Walt Nauta: The former president’s personal aide, who has been accused of
conspiring with Trump to obstruct the government’s efforts to retrieve the
documents, has pleaded not guilty .

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