Trump has raised over $100 million for his 2020 re-election bid
President Donald Trump has raked in more than $106 million for his bid for re-election -- even though it is over two years away, new Federal Election Commission reports show.
The total, raised since January 2017, includes contributions received through his primary campaign committee as well as two affiliated committees: Trump Victory and Trump Make America Great Again. A portion of the money raised through Trump Victory and Trump Make America Great Again goes to the Republican National Committee.
Just from July through September, the three committees raised more than $18 million and spent over $12 million. They kicked off October with nearly $47 million in cash on hand in Trump's war chest.
The new reports also show spending over the last quarter that reflects an increasingly aggressive campaign by Team Trump, led by 2020 campaign manager and digital guru Brad Parscale.
The biggest portion of the campaign funds, more than $1.6 million, went to a newly-formed company named American Made Media Consultants, which, according to The New York Times, was set up by the Trump campaign to purchase digital, radio and television ads.
With ad buys going through the new vendor, the firm run by Trump's campaign digital guru, Parscale Strategy, only received a relatively moderate $564,000 from the Trump campaign in the last quarter, compared to $2.9 million total from the first half of 2018.
The Trump campaign's law firm, Jones Day, which helped set up American Made Media Consultants, also received a sum of $1.3 million from the campaign in the last quarter.
Other legal bills included $173,000 to Mintz Levin, a firm that had represented former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski during inquiries related to the special counsel probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and $42,588 to Larocca Hornik Rosen Greenberg & Blaha, a firm that had represented Trump and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen in matters related to Stormy Daniels.
Another new disclosure report filed with the Internal Revenue Service on Monday shows that a legal defense fund set up to provide financial help for former Trump campaign personnel and White House staffers caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation has spent about $122,000 in legal expenditures, including a $8,400 payment to a law firm that represented former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller.
Many of the latest donations to the fund came from a waste management executive, Anthony Lomangino.
But by far the biggest support for Trump so far has come from Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam Adelson, who each donated $5 million to America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC linked to former and current Trump campaign officials, including Parscale.
