FEC Records Show Trump Stiffed Attorneys Who Now Face Jail Time For 2020 Election Scheme: Report
(AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
Rudy Giuliani and other attorneys named in the Georgia indictment for allegedly pushing 2020 election lies never got a dime from Donald Trump for their “post-election work,” according to a CNBC report.
CNBC’s Brian Schwartz wrote that Giuliani and Trump had a “handshake agreement” providing $20,000 a day for the Giuliani team’s services. Those included filing lawsuit after lawsuit seeking to overturn the election that Trump lost to Joe Biden. Ultimately, more than 60 lawsuits filed were dismissed as “frivolous.”
Schwartz cited Federal Election Commission records and testimony from the Jan. 6 House select committee hearings.
“The failure to pay Giuliani and his team came up last week in a private interview between special counsel Jack Smith’s team and Bernard Kerik, a Giuliani associate,” CNBC reported. Smith has two cases pending against Trump, one in Miami for allegedly trying conceal government documents, and the other in Washington, D.C., for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election that led up to the Capitol riot.
Other Trump attorneys stiffed included Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and John Eastman, according to the report.
To add insult to injury, the Trump camp actually made money off of the attorneys’ efforts to push false claims, to the tune of $250 million in donor funds, Schwartz reported, adding that the money is now paying to defend Trump from the myriad criminal cases against him. Schwartz wrote:
Trump has a long history of not paying his bills. But the revelation that he likely stiffed Giuliani, a longtime friend, is all the more striking given that much of the work Giuliani did for the Trump operation is detailed in a sprawling RICO indictment in Georgia released Monday, in which Giuliani is a co-defendant alongside Trump and 17 other people.
The indictment details trips Giuliani made, phone calls he placed and meetings he attended, all in service of what prosecutors say was a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election.
Criminal or not, what is indisputable is that Giuliani and his team did a lot of legal and PR work for Trump. Over more than two months, Giuliani served as the public face of Trump’s election challenges, which ultimately failed.
