Want to party with President Trump and maybe some Cabinet member on New Year’s Eve? Just pay $750 for a night at Mar-a-Lago. Want to impress the president ahead of an important Oval Office meeting? Rent out one of the conference rooms at Trump Hotel. Want even more access? Pay $200,000 to become a member at one of his hotels, clubs, or golf courses.
This pay-to-play arrangement has already been documented. But the role of political “outside groups” as middle men has gotten too little attention. It is brilliantly simple, effective, and beyond legal reproach.
Here is how it works: Trump the candidate cannot coordinate and cannot accept any money from any of the various groups organized to keep him in office. It would be illegal, for instance, if Trump’s campaign took money directly from a super PAC. But if you’re clever enough to work it through intermediaries, you can get money through a super PAC to Trump himself.
That’s one way to look at what’s happening right now with America First Action and the Trump Hotel.
America First is a pro-Trump group that has employed former White House staffers like Katie Walsh Shields.* Their super PAC drops hundreds of thousands and millions to support the president by electing sympathetic federal candidates.
The Trump Hotel is the posh hotel and event space just a couple blocks from the White House. Guests can book a night starting at around $450 in the hotel, order a $110 porterhouse steak at the restaurant, and sip wine by the $15, $20, or $140-spoonful at the bar. It has become the luxe watering hole of the Right. It has also become the locus of a lot of spending by America First Action.
The super PAC has been spending a lot of money at the Trump Hotel according to FEC filings. They spent $119,000 there in August of 2018 alone. Since Inauguration Day, they have spent nearly $350,000 there and at various Trump-owned properties. Lodging and meals or catering and event rentals, it doesn’t matter what. If America First needs a meal or a ballroom, it seems they go straight to a Trump property first.
It is the closest thing to direct deposit that is still legal. The company is majority owned by Donald J. Trump himself. He can do anything he wants with the profits. He could use that wad of cash to help fund his re-election just as easily as he could use the money to build a post-presidential mansion.
In 2000, during his run for the Reform Party nomination for president, Trump remarked, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” He didn’t make money on it in 2016, but who’s to say he didn’t have a longer time frame in mind?
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* An earlier version of this story suggested that Shields still worked at America First.
