It’s been widely reported that former President Donald Trump has covered legal expenses for witnesses testifying before the Jan. 6 committee, but the full amount that Trump has been forking over has largely remained a mystery.
A new federal filing has fleshed that number out. And it turns out, it’s a lot higher than previously reported.
Trump’s latest Federal Election Commission report indicates that payments from his political committees to firms representing Jan. 6 witnesses are now approaching $2 million.
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But even before this number emerged, Trump’s patronage was already raising concerns among Democrats and legal experts that the ex-president is—once again—trying to exert influence over witnesses who could have information implicating him in possible criminal activity.
Some of those witnesses sat for interviews with the committee as the investigation was heating up this spring. And according to a disclosure filed last week, around that same time, Trump’s old campaign committee made a curious, and major, payment—a flat $1 million to a law firm called Elections, LLC.
Trump is under no obligation to spell out exactly what that payment is for, and he does not do so. But we do know a lot about that firm, which has long been close to Trump.
Elections, LLC was founded by three Trump alums. Two of them have given testimony that the Jan. 6 panel aired in public videos, and the third has represented a star witness against the president—former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Additionally, the new filing—covering April through June—revealed hundreds of thousands of dollars to law firms Trump has rarely or never paid. Some of those firms are known to represent witnesses who have given crucial testimony to House investigators.
Trump has reportedly tapped leadership PAC money to foot legal costs for witnesses. But the specific group behind the million-dollar check—called “Make America Great Again PAC”—has not been previously reported to have covered such expenses.
Elections, LLC is particularly close to Trump’s political operation. The firm has pulled in a combined $1.3 million from Trump since he left office, and the Save America leadership PAC and MAGA PAC both reported tens of thousands of dollars in recent expenses.
But this million-dollar payout was unlike any of those earlier expenses—in fact, it’s unlike any other legal payment that Trump or any other political committee has ever made.
First, it’s about $940,000 larger than Trump’s previous largest payment to Elections, LLC, according to FEC data. In fact, the $1 million represents Trump’s second-largest legal expense to any law firm ever.
Curiously, however, that million dollars didn’t go straight to the firm’s bank account. Instead, MAGA PAC directed the funds to a separate trust account, called an “IOLTA.” Law firms often use these segregated trusts to hold money for clients—and to subsidize costs for non-paying clients.
It’s unclear why Trump suddenly put such a large sum of money into this particular trust account at this particular time. (A spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.) But if the $1 million number sounds familiar, it’s the same amount that Trump’s Save America PAC donated last year to two nonprofit groups. One hosts an array of former Trump advisers, and backed his failed social media lawsuit; the other now employs his former chief of staff Mark Meadows—Hutchinson’s old boss. The Jan. 6 committee has highlighted both gifts.
But federal data suggests it’s exceedingly rare for political committees to direct payments of any amount to a law firm’s trust account.
The Daily Beast found a total of five groups that have taken that route, and the amounts are paltry. The largest payment was $14,000 from America First Action (a Trump-aligned super PAC), and that money was tagged for a specific purpose: a legal settlement.
Then there’s the timing.
Around the time of the deposit, in early May, the congressional investigation was beginning to hit full stride. And they had conducted interviews with two Elections, LLC co-founders—ex-campaign attorneys Justin Clark and Matt Morgan.
Clark and Morgan were both at the top of the 2020 campaign’s legal department, and could spill a lot of tea. They pose a unique threat to Trump, and in some of the earlier televised hearings last month, the Jan. 6 panel played clips of both men recalling their efforts to persuade the defeated president to abandon what they saw as his doomed quest to change the election’s outcome.
And just two weeks ago, federal agents separately interviewed Clark in connection with Steve Bannon’s contempt trial. According to a court filing, Clark dealt Bannon’s defense a staggering blow, confirming that Trump had never invoked executive privilege over anything related to Bannon’s congressional subpoena.
The firm’s third co-founder, Stefan Passantino, was at the time representing Cassidy Hutchinson. Last month, Hutchinson, who herself was reportedly the target of a possible witness coercion campaign, changed lawyers and delivered astonishing testimony against the president in a televised hearing.
After Hutchinson’s explosive testimony, The New York Times revealed that Trump-aligned groups have either covered or offered to pay legal costs for more than a dozen witnesses called by the House select committee, including Hutchinson.
And it turns out that the IOLTA payment had company. Because at the same time, Trump was cutting checks to other firms representing Jan. 6 witnesses—and those payments haven’t been reported.
According to the PAC’s disclosure, between April 1 and June 30, the group paid eight law firms out of its “recount” account. Three of them—Greenberg Traurig; the Garber Group; and Marino, Tortorella, & Boyle—had never previously received any money from Trump.
Greenberg Traurig, one of the largest firms in the country, represents former Trump adviser Jason Miller, who testified to the committee. The firm received a lump sum of nearly $300,000 on April 13 to cover those steep costs, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.
Kevin Marino, founding partner of Marino, Tortorella, & Boyle, serves as counsel for former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien. After the Jan. 6 panel played video testimony of Stepien contradicting Trump’s claims of election fraud, he canceled his scheduled public hearing, saying his wife was going into labor. Stepien hasn’t rescheduled. Marino racked up $16,000 on April 26.
MAGA PAC also paid government investigations specialist Ross Garber about $90,000 in three installments—two in April, one in early June. Garber’s legal ties to Trump or his allies are unclear, but he has previously made public comments favorable to the committee, even praising its work securing witness cooperation.
Other attorneys in the group are also new to the Trump payroll.
Jennifer Little caught a $110,000 windfall last quarter, bringing the Atlanta-based criminal defense attorney’s 2022 total up to about $260,000. Little hadn’t been on the payroll while Trump was in office, getting her first check in late March 2021.
Shortly before her check went out, the Fulton County prosecutor’s office empaneled a grand jury to investigate Trump’s pressure campaign against Georgia officials. Those efforts included attempts to get former U.S. Attorney Bjay Pak to pursue baseless allegations of voter fraud; Pak has testified to the Jan. 6 committee.
Election lawyer Linda Kerns also appeared on the new filing. In 2020, Kerns pocketed $30,000 from the campaign for running ballot challenges in Pennsylvania, but withdrew in late November 2020, when the Rudy Giuliani-led “Team Crazy” took the reins—a subject of interest to the congressional committee. Kerns, whose election work made her the target of a bar complaint earlier this month, got a fresh $6,700 from MAGA PAC on April 26.
It is not strictly illegal to pay someone else’s attorney fees. This is true even if the two parties are caught up in the same matter, though such an arrangement can raise ethical concerns, as the Times reported. Those concerns can be particularly acute if a person has a reputation for meddling with adverse witnesses, as Trump does.
On the heels of the Times article, ABC News found that Trump’s Save America leadership PAC had doled out nearly half a million dollars to lawyers representing several associates subpoenaed in the investigation, including Hutchinson, Bannon, and former White House adviser Peter Navarro. And on Wednesday evening, Save America reported more spending to some of those attorneys in June, including $10,000 to insurrection lawyer Cleta Mitchell’s new firm.
When the new expenses are combined with the $471,000 that ABC News previously identified, Trump groups have so far paid these firms nearly a million dollars, in addition to the $1 million check.
However, the payments aren’t the only mysteries in that new filing.
Exactly one week after MAGA PAC made the million-dollar IOLTA payment, the PAC filled the hole, clocking almost exactly $1 million from a joint fundraising committee that hadn’t transferred money to the PAC in more than a year.
They weren’t new donations, either. They had been sitting in the joint committee’s account for 18 months. All were dated Nov. 8, 2020—the day after the networks called the race for Joe Biden.
