Former President Donald Trump spent $375,000 raised from his followers for rent at his financially troubled Manhattan skyscraper last year ― even though his political committees have no presence in the building.
“It’s a huge scam,” said one former aide with direct knowledge of Trump’s political spending. “I can’t believe his base lets him get away with it.”
The ex-aide’s assertion was confirmed by a Trump Tower employee who screens traffic to offices above the floors that are open to visitors. When asked for permission to visit Trump’s political office recently, the employee told HuffPost that Save America and its related entities did not have offices there.
“It’s all being run out of Florida,” he said, declining to give his name.
Trump’s staff at his political committees did not respond to HuffPost queries.
A HuffPost analysis of Federal Election Commission filings shows that Trump’s Make America Great Again PAC spent $37,541.67 in each of 10 months last year renting office space at Trump Tower, the former president’s 57-story mixed-use building near Central Park.
That was the same monthly amount his campaign had spent there from mid-2017 through the end of 2020, when his reelection campaign was actually based in northern Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington.
In all those months, there was at most one person who periodically visited the 7,000-square-foot office in Trump Tower, the former aide said. But Trump insisted on having the campaign continue renting there ― as it had during the 2016 election ― because the building was having trouble finding tenants, he said. “They knew they couldn’t lose that money because the building is hurting so bad.”
After the 2020 election, the Trump presidential campaign committee was reformulated as the Make America Great Again PAC and continued leasing the space. Only now it is not used at all, except to store campaign memorabilia, the former aide said. “No one works at that office,” he said. “It sits there locked up.”
Sadly, his base loves him so much that they’re fine with the fact that he’s scamming poor people out of their small sums to keep his white elephant Trump Tower afloat. They’re happy to do it. After all, they have made Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcasts one of the most successful in the country and he was indicted and then pardoned by Trump for scamming unwitting donors out of millions.