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A prominent MAGA legal nonprofit run by a top Donald Trump aide has credited itself for gathering “some of the nation’s best legal, political, and strategic thinkers” to fight “anti-white bigotry” in the courts, spending a staggering $35.2 million to initiate dozens of culture-war lawsuits against the Biden administration, universities, and corporations last year.
But tax filings show that the group, “America First Legal,” isn’t exactly spending all that money on lawsuits. In fact, the lawsuits account for a very small percentage of the $35 million budget. That’s because America First Legal blew nearly all of that money, about $30 million—more than 85 percent of the budget—on advertising.
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About 4 percent of the group’s expenditures, less than $1.5 million, went toward the namesake “legal” services, while about 7.5 percent—$2.7 million—was spent on salaries and compensation.
America First Legal was co-founded by Trump’s racist-rhetoric-wielding speechwriter Stephen Miller and former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and it operates as a sister organization under the Conservative Partnership Institute’s sprawling MAGA umbrella. Last year, AFL posted eye-popping fundraising numbers, with its tax returns revealing $44 million in contributions—a massive jump from the $6.4 million raised in 2021, the group’s first year in existence.
In 2022, Miller received $187,000 as president and executive director of the group. Meanwhile, the top-paid employee was general counsel and secretary Gene Hamilton, who made about $275,000—no small shakes, but well short of the $889,000 that Meadows received from CPI that same year. (AFL’s board also added failed GOP senatorial candidate Blake Masters in an unpaid capacity.)
For whatever reason, AFL—which is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) charity—clearly prioritized its donations for marketing, as opposed to the “legal” concerns that serve as the group’s stated raison d'être. In all, advertising expenses were roughly six times the size of the group’s total other costs combined, and about 30 times higher than the $1 million AFL paid the five in-house lawyers it lists as key employees.
While the group styles itself as a conservative version of the American Civil Liberties Union—“the long-awaited answer to the ACLU”—AFL spent twice as much on ads as the ACLU in 2022, operating with one-fourth of the ACLU’s budget. AFL also spent three times as much on ads as the ACLU’s 501(c)(3) arm, while boasting a budget three times smaller.
AFL also doled out some grants last year, but those only amounted to $145,285—one-third of 1 percent of revenue, and less than its $202,500 in grants the previous year. The money went to three groups: $25,000 for the American Accountability Foundation; $75,000 for the Rule of Law Fund, a Jan. 6 organizer; and $45,285 as part of a “strategic litigation partnership” with the Ethics and Public Policy Center—a group that says it works “to apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics.”
AFL also racked up about $850,000 in fundraising expenses, including a $132,500 commission to MAGA megadonor Caroline Wren’s company for the $1.3 million raised through her network last year.
Trump, of course, has long been accused of using absurd and frivolous legal claims as a form of political advertising. But AFL isn’t being sneaky or clever in its filings with the IRS. Nearly every penny of its $30 million ad budget went to three marketing firms, according to information the group was required to provide about its top five paid contractors.
The two companies at the bottom of that list were both law firms, whose outside services cost a combined $650,000. Mitchell Law of Austin, Texas, received around $414,000, and Consovoy McCarthy, a premier boutique conservative firm, took in about $234,000. Together with unspecified expenses, AFL’s total “legal” costs came out to $1,493,860.
The $30 million ad budget was split almost entirely between three entities—PG Placements, Jamestown Associates, and FlexPoint Media. Ohio-based PG Placements was the top earner, receiving about $12.8 million. Next was Jamestown Associates—a political marketing and media production firm whose alums include Trump campaign royalty Jason Miller and Bill Stepien—which was paid roughly $11.7 million. And FlexPoint Media received a flat $5 million.
Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller speaks with fellow supporters as they gather in the ballroom at former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
Jonathan Ernst/ReutersHowever, Virginia business records show that PG Placements doubles as a pseudonym for FlexPoint Media, meaning that AFL really only paid two companies, with PG/FlexPoint raking in nearly $18 million combined in 2022. That’s almost three times AFL’s total revenue the prior year.
While the full scope of those marketing services is unclear, AFL did run a number of well-publicized ad campaigns in 2022. Colloquially, those ads could be described as blatantly political. But as a 501(c)(3) charity, AFL is barred from participating in “political activity” of any kind—a narrow definition for tax status purposes, which essentially only captures attempts to influence specific elections. So while many of AFL’s promotions bashed Democratic policies and championed positions specific to Trump’s agenda, they stopped short of denouncing or endorsing the election of any specific candidate or ballot measure.
For instance, ahead of the 2022 midterms, The New York Times reported that AFL was behind a $6.5 million radio and TV campaign, featuring incendiary rhetoric about “anti-white bigotry” and accusing the Joe Biden administration, along with American colleges and businesses, of racial discrimination against whites.
The Washington Post called those ads “disingenuous,” and fact-checking organizations dismantled multiple claims. But AFL was behind other ad campaigns around the same time, including a “vile” and “racist” anti-immigrant ad that aired during the 2022 Major League Baseball playoffs, a “hateful” anti-transgender radio spot in Pennsylvania, and anti-white and anti-Asian mailers in the Dallas metro area that were denounced as “hate mail.”
When The Daily Beast asked why AFL’s promotional budget was so high while legal expenses were so low, AFL general counsel Gene Hamilton downplayed the advertising binge and called the question “a complete mischaracterization of the contents of the 990.”
“There were advertising expenditures related to a public education campaign last year about systemic racial discrimination and other matters, but nearly all of our operating budget aside from those expenses went to legal work,” Hamilton wrote in an email, specifying that legal work included “salaries, internal operating expenses, etc.”
“We have a team of in-house attorneys and other work that are not captured by line items related to outside counsel. You can’t take one line item and assume that’s the budget for all of the lawsuits we filed last year or the other related legal work. That’s like looking at how much money Coca-Cola spent on syrup and saying that’s their budget for Coke in a year,” Hamilton wrote. “But if that’s your pre-set narrative, which I assume it is based on the timeline you provided, good luck.”
While it’s true that the “legal” line item captures outside counsel services, Hamilton’s explanation doesn’t account for the massive gap between AFL’s $30 million ad spending and its operating costs as a legal group. (Office expenses were $20,000, information technology was $74,000, and occupancy fees—rent—was $61,000.)
Law firms and public interest groups like AFL hire outside counsel for a number of reasons—to offset work burdens, conduct research, serve as local representation in court, provide specialized expertise, and fill internal knowledge gaps. The size of outside counsel fees is therefore frequently commensurate with internal caseload.
After publication, Hamilton sent an additional 225-word statement that reiterated many of the same points he made in his previous statement. Without further explanation, he claimed the percentage breakdowns of the group’s spending were vastly off, and claimed—without addressing the $30 million on advertising—that a big misunderstanding was that the in-house salaries were for legal work.
“The vast majority of AFL staff are attorneys who are directly involved in litigating court cases and conducting our groundbreaking legal work. In 2022, we maintained *dozens* of lawsuits, and scores of FOIA requests, and engaged in a variety of other critical legal tasks to advance our mission, winning many significant victories,” Hamilton said.
“We don't waste our donors' money on the frivolous and are truly proud of our extraordinary efficiency,” he said.
In 2021, when AFL raised $6.4 million, it reported paying roughly $580,000 for legal services and about $650,000 for employee compensation, while spending less than $70,000 on ads and promotions.
Together, the outlays indicate a significant shift in AFL’s spending priorities. The group applied the vast majority of its 2022 fundraising windfall not to building out its internal operations, but to an advertising campaign that provided ideological air support to Republicans ahead of the midterms.
While the 2022 ad budget appears extreme, AFL’s operational costs also appear remarkably low for an organization that had its proverbial thumbs in so many pies. In December 2022, The Washington Post reported that AFL had backed at least four dozen federal lawsuits since April 2021. Many of them are still alive today, including several in various stages of appeal.
Of course, AFL likely reaps a number of infrastructure efficiencies from its partnership with CPI. But alternatively, perhaps the impression of AFL’s frenetic activity in 2022, which was widely covered in national media, was itself an illusory product of savvy marketing, with the group handling much of its actual legal work on the cheap.
According to the law firm Gibson Dunn, AFL dramatically accelerated its anti-corporate diversity legal complaint letter campaign in 2022, with many of the ultimately toothless missives sensationalized in the media as robust legal attacks on the Biden administration.
AFL’s lawsuits have met with varied degrees of success. One eventually forced Democrats to revamp a subsidy law that AFL had argued discriminated against white farmers, though Black farmers have since launched their own countersuit. Another 2022 effort tanked a $29 billion federal program that prioritized aid to restaurants with minority and women owners.
But other attempts have failed, even drawing accusations that AFL is engaged in frivolous litigation. For instance, the hiring discrimination case AFL brought against Texas A&M University in 2022 on behalf of a white academic who said he refused to apply for a job at the school out of fear he would be discriminated against—that was tossed this October. A Pennsylvania court also dismissed a ballot box challenge last year. Many cases are still hung up in court, some at the appellate stage. Federal judges tossed two 2022 suits against local school districts in Ohio and Wisconsin, which AFL has appealed.
While AFL has touted its culture-war victories, The Washington Post noted that many of its wins come by virtue of AFL’s choice of venue, “consistently filing lawsuits in a conservative-friendly judicial district in Texas.” The higher Fifth Circuit of Appeals in the region provides further conservative padding, in a larger federal system broadly overhauled with Trump’s judicial appointees.
On the donor side, more than 60 percent of AFL’s 2022 revenue—$27.1 million—came from one source. According to tax documents provided to The Daily Beast by True North Research, that money was funneled through a right-wing donor-advised fund called the Bradley Impact Fund, which raises money through a network of donors and then extends grants to groups identified by the conservative Bradley Foundation.
AFL does not disclose any of its donors, but donor-advised organizations like the Bradley Impact Fund serve as a middleman, offering an extra layer of anonymity—particularly for entities that publicize their charitable giving elsewhere.
The AFL donation was by far the Bradley Impact Fund’s largest grant of 2022, nearly three times the $7.7 million designated for the right-wing youth group Turning Point USA. The fund also facilitated a $1.8 million gift to Project Veritas, a self-identifying “media” organization notorious for deceptive “sting” tactics.
Last year, a jury found that Project Veritas had violated wiretapping laws and fraudulently misrepresented itself to a Democratic group.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated with additional comment from AFL.
