Endorsed by her father-in-law to help take over the Republican National Committee, Lara Trump said multiple times this week she will reshape the Republican Party to funnel cash to former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and possibly help pay millions in ballooning legal expenses across his four criminal and slew of civil cases.
Though she has yet to ascend to RNC co-chair, as the former president expressed his desire for, Lara Trump has made very public her family’s desire to run it like a "family affair." It is just the latest in a cascade of developments that have affirmed Donald Trump’s grip on his party at all levels of its infrastructure as he pursues a second term.
“Absolutely,” she told reporters after a rally in Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday when asked if supporters would want their donations going to legal bills. “That's why people are furious right now. And they see the attacks against him. They feel like it's an attack not just on Donald Trump, but on this country.”
She added she thinks paying Trump’s legal expenses is “a big interest” to supporters, but she didn’t know if RNC rules would allow the political party to pay a candidate’s legal fees. She said at the rally she hoped to lead the RNC to raise $500 million by November. The committee has raised around $100 million since the beginning of last year, but ended in January with $8.7 million in the bank, filings show. In 2019 and 2020, the RNC raised $890 million and had $76 million in cash at this point in that cycle, according to federal campaign finance records.
“I will ensure that every dollar goes to the causes that we the people care about,” Lara Trump said at the Wednesday rally, including the president’s campaign, the push to retake the Senate and expanding the House majority with “America First candidates.”
The former president’s campaign fundraising has floundered in recent months, with two of his main committees being out-raised in January by both Democratic rival President Joe Biden and his last remaining Republican challenger, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. In that month alone, the first U.S. president to ever be charged with a crime spent $3.7 million on legal fees and one of his committees had $2 million in unpaid legal debts, campaign finance records show.
And that may not be the full scope of his January expenses: other major committees and a super PAC supporting the Trump 2024 effort file quarterly, not monthly, so their records won’t be made public until April. In 2023, the GOP frontrunner’s campaign finance apparatus spent around $50 million of his just under $200 million donations on legal expenses as he was arrested, indicted and charged four times with a total of 91 felony criminal counts and battled multiple civil cases.
Now, with at least some of his four criminal cases expected to begin this year, those expenses could rise. And a civil fraud trial brought by state Attorney General Letitia James ended last week with a ban on him doing business in the state for three years and a financial penalty that can reach as high as $450 million due to interest that back dates to 2019. On Thursday, the Manhattan judge in that case declined to delay the enforcement of payments, though the former president’s legal team has indicated they plan to appeal the ruling.
“There's no doubt that if my father-in-law was not running for President of the United States right now, you wouldn't see any of these indictments against him,” Lara Trump said after the Charleston rally on Wednesday, echoing the former president and claiming without evidence the criminal charges were evidence of “election interference” orchestrated by Biden.
“They wouldn't be trying to tear his business apart to ruin and destroy his family, his legacy and everything that he's worked his entire life for,” she added.
The Democratic National Committee suggested GOP donors “save themselves the effort and just light their cash on fire themselves,” in a statement on Thursday.
“Lara Trump is a self-described ‘ultra-MAGA’ extremist who has been endorsed by her father-in-law to transform the RNC into a shell for Donald Trump and his legal bills,” DNC rapid response director Alex Floyd said. “With Donald Trump already pouring gasoline onto the dumpster fire that is the RNC, Lara Trump taking over as co-chair ensures that both the RNC and Trump campaign will continue to put up the same disastrous fundraising numbers they have filing after filing.”
Lara Trump has yet to assume the RNC co-chair position, nor has Donald Trump’s preferred candidate for the party’s top job: North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley. But he is all but certain to get his wish to replace current RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, a longtime loyalist who has earned criticism from the former president and allies for her strategy and handling of finances, as well as her perceived lack of enthusiasm for investigating false and unfounded claims of voter fraud.
“If elected as co-chair of the RNC, I can promise you, we will not be giving blank checks to career political consultants and vendors,” Lara Trump said at CPAC, an annual gathering of Republicans and right-wing allies outside Washington, on Thursday. “Every penny of every dollar donated will go towards one thing: winning.”
The former president’s daughter-in-law has not said when he approached her about taking the role. She said as of Wednesday she has not spoken to the man she would be replacing, current co-chair Drew McKissick, a longtime South Carolina political operative who has previously been endorsed by Trump for other roles.
“He's probably been very clear, publicly for a long time, that he feels there should be changes at the RNC,” Lara Trump said in Charleston on Wednesday. “I would say privately for him. I'm sure he's been talking quite a bit with Ronna.”
Despite the yet-to-happen transition, Lara Trump is already projecting publicly what she will do as co-chair. In an interview with radio host Mark Kaye on Tuesday she said she would appoint far-right operative Scott Presler to be “in charge of a legal ballot harvesting operation for the RNC.” Presler, a proponent of false election conspiracies, spent much of Trump’s first term helping organize anti-Muslim “March Against Sharia” rallies across the country that attracted “white nationalists, neo-Nazis and antigovernment extremists — all of whom were united by anti-Muslim animus,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“If I am elected co-chair, he will be one of my first calls to get in there and get involved,” Lara Trump told Kaye. “Scott Presler is top of my list. I think he's amazing.”
Beyond the RNC, Donald Trump has seen loyalists atop key state parties, eliminated all but one of his primary rivals and earned the endorsements of a majority of GOP House and Senate members, including the entirety of House Republican leadership. Haley, his last remaining competitor, has earned the endorsement of just two governors — to Trump’s 11 — and one House member. Polling suggests the former president will beat the former South Carolina by north of 30 percentage points in her home state’s primary on Saturday.
“The RNC will be supporting whoever the Republican nominee for president is,” Lara Trump said on Wednesday. “I think we all know that's going to be Donald Trump.”