Legal experts say that Donald Trump won't be charged with fraud related to his campaign's alleged efforts to deceive supporters into donating money to a non-existent fund.
The US House's January 6 select committee confirmed that there was no such fund. The then-president's campaign repeatedly hit up their supporters with warnings about election fraud. The president received a record amount of donations before he left office.
After a top investigator for the committee documented how none of the hundreds of millions of dollars Trump's outfit raised in the months after the election went to supporting his various court, Rep. Lofgren appeared to open the door to potential fraud claims.
He lied to his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn't exist, and used the money raised for something else. Lofgren, who has served as a key investigator in impeachments dating back to Nixon, said after Monday's hearing that it was for someone else to decide if that was criminal or not.
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Insider was told that while Trump may have lied to donors, there are still important details that are not known.
Adav Noti, vice president and legal director at the Campaign Legal Center, said that to prove that someone authorized solicitations that said the money was going to be spent on election contests, you need to show that it was false. It wouldn't be enough for criminal purposes to say, "Here's what happened."
The January 6 committee revealed previously undisclosed testimony from Trump campaign officials, where they admitted that the emails were more of a marketing ploy than a serious effort to fund court battles related to the 2020 presidential election.
The committee's senior investigative counsel said in a video that the Trump campaign knew voter fraud was false and continued to bombard small-dollar donors with emails. The committee found that there was no such fund.
"What the campaign did sounds like a fraudulent pattern, but the fact that a case would center on the then-sitting President of the United States and his campaign could make prosecutors less likely to pursue a case."
If someone raised that amount of money through false pretenses they might be looking at a prosecution for fraud. When it comes to charging decisions, the fact that this fraud was committed on behalf of the president is significant.
Trump lashed out at the select committee's hearings in a 12-page statement.
If they had any evidence, they would hold hearings with equal representation. "So they use the illegally-constituted committee to put on a smoke and mirrors show for the American people, in a pathetic last-ditch effort to deceive them again."
The FEC is a bipartisan regulatory agency that serves as the civil enforcer of campaign finance law, but it is likely that any campaign money related legal peril for Trump would come from the Justice Department.
Four of the six members of the commission are nominated by the president. The commission has often failed to reach a consensus on these cases.
In May, the FEC deadlocked on a complaint that Trump's 2020 White House campaign laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in spending through corporate entities tied to the ex-president and his family.
The Department of Justice has been willing to prosecute campaign finance cases in the past. Nicholas Jones pleaded guilty to concealing thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. A jury found a congressman guilty earlier this year. Jeff Fortenberry lied to the FBI about an illegal contribution to his campaign.
The Department of Justice has a spotty record when it comes to campaign finance prosecutions.
After a jury found him not guilty on one count of violating campaign finance law, prosecutors decided not to try him again.
Criminal campaign finance charges against the former president of the U.S. would be a first.
The Department of Justice's standard of not commenting on current or potential future investigations is what Attorney General Garland cited.
Some Democrats have criticized Garland for being too soft on people who did not runsack the Capitol, but still contributed to efforts to overturn the election.
Kenneth Gross, a former head of enforcement at the FEC, said any campaign finance case that Trump or his campaign officials could potentially face would be difficult for prosecutors.
If there was a diversion of funds for personal use, that is the kind of thing that prosecutors would be interested in.
The Washington Post pointed out in 2020 that Trump's campaign told potential donors in fine print that 75% of their donations would go to his leadership group.
Trump's re-election campaign committee, along with the political action committees that have succeeded it, have made outrageous claims to potential donors.
Insider previously reported that many of the promises of donation "matches" never came to fruition.
According to the Department of Justice, fraudulent match solicitations were one of several misdeeds that factored into a political scam artist's guilty plea.
The campaign money scandals may not be the most serious of Trump's legal problems.
The Fulton County District Attorney is looking into the president's actions after he lost the state. The attorney general brought a suit against the inaugural committee for paying too much money to the company that used the hotel.
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