A legal defense fund for Donald Trump appears to have placed its spending priorities in a strange place: Mar-a-Lago.
New tax filings show Trump’s legal defense fund raising about $1.6 million over the last six months and spending less than $30,000. But more notable than how little the legal defense group has spent is what they didn’t spend it on—namely, legal services—as well as what they paid for: a party at Mar-a-Lago.
The group—a political nonprofit called the “Patriot Legal Defense Fund”—was created by Trump campaign officials in July to help pay down the beleaguered former president’s snowballing court costs.
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While the fund can accept unlimited donations from both individuals and corporations, its first periodic financial report, submitted to the Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday, indicates a phlegmatic start, with only about $1.6 million in receipts. (Trump’s 2024 campaign had raised about $56.7 million as of Sept. 30.) Even more alarming from the group is that the majority of that money—$1 million—came from a single contribution, given by a donor couple whose previous association with QAnon conspiracy theory forced the campaign to cancel a fundraiser ahead of the 2020 election.
The day after this article was published, the PLDF filed two new financial statements for the same period. Neither were marked as amended versions, but both wiped the slate clean, claiming that the fund had neither raised nor spent any money. Asked again for comment, a PLDF representative told The Daily Beast that the original filing was “incomplete,” saying, “it’s now being updated and will be refiled prior to the January deadline.”
The fund says its purpose is to “raise money and pay for or help defray legal expenses related to defending against legal actions arising from an individual or group’s participation in the political process.” But none of its expenses appear related to that mission.
In fact, the Patriot Legal Defense Fund spent just $28,578 over the last six months, with Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club getting $18,136 for “banquet hall” fees in late November. The second biggest payout went to Trump political adviser Michael Glassner, who runs the fund and received $2,500 for “consulting,” paid through his public affairs firm C&M Transcontinental.
A representative for the fund did not immediately reply to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
It’s unclear why the fund reported no legal expenses. Trump has been hemorrhaging cash for years due to ever-mounting legal fees, and that pressure has only increased after the PLDF launched in July.
Since then, Trump has added new cases in D.C. federal court and Fulton County, Georgia—both involving charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. And while Trump has famously tapped political donors to cover legal costs for co-defendants and witnesses wrapped up in his alleged crime wave, many others, from Rudy Giuliani to Jenna Ellis, have expressed consternation at being jilted, and some have resorted to crowd-funding. This summer, Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, helped cover nearly $1 million in costs for an expert witness who worked on Trump’s behalf in his $250 million New York civil fraud lawsuit, NBC News reported.
But the fund appears to have dealt with some potential legal matters of its own, regarding an apparent imposter scam. In September, The Daily Beast reported that the fund had denounced a fake website—patriotlegaldefensefund.com—which had see-sawed between being virulently anti-Trump and virulently pro-Trump, before settling on the pro-Trump message and selling mugshot merchandise.
It’s unclear how much the fake site may have cut into the real group’s fundraising. But in recent weeks, the homepage has gone through major changes, scrubbing all mention of Trump’s legal defense and removing the merch in favor of a burst of campaign talking points with links to Trump’s 2024 website.
The real fund’s million dollar donor was a foundation, called the “Caryn L. Hildenbrand Living Trust,” which made its donation on Nov. 6, listing a California address. Court records show that the trust belongs to Caryn and Michael Borland, whose ardent support for QAnon led the Trump campaign to cancel an October 2020 fundraiser that the Borlands were holding for then Vice President Mike Pence, the Associated Press reported at the time.
The utterly nonsensical QAnon conspiracy theory embraces a universe of baseless claims, including allegations that Democrats are engaged in satanic child rape and innumerable fruitless predictions regarding the “deep state” and Trump’s political future.
In 2020, the Borlands contributed $1 million to Trump’s 2020 re-election efforts, but the campaign canceled their fundraiser after reports that the Borlands had prominently displayed and shared a number of QAnon memes and posts.
Another top contributor to the fund—Lauren Pizza of New Jersey—is married to a major Trump donor and hydroxychloroquine distributor. Pizza, whose 2014 memoir noted that “Donald Trump sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me at Mar-a-Lago,” gave $200,000 on Sept. 25.
Other top donors include Beverly Hills real estate outfit Probity International ($125,000), Southern Trust Capital LLC of Huntsville, Alabama ($100,000), and New Jersey accountant Dominic Caglioti ($50,000).
Cleveland Funeral Home, of Cleveland, Mississippi, also contributed $34,000.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect Patriot Legal Defense Fund's latest filings.
