From the Daily News Bin:
August 24, 2016
This week’s new Federal Election Commission disclosures have revealed that Donald Trump has been using a variety of creative tactics to funnel his campaign’s donations into his own pocket which have violated the spirit of the law. For instance he keeps raising the rent he charges his campaign for its office space at Trump Tower. But it turns out he also used the Republican National Convention to funnel money to himself in a way which has violated the letter of the law – and now he’s busted.
Even though by some estimates Donald Trump has funneled as much as$8 million in donations to himself through various quasi-legal methods, it turns out to be a fairly small amount of money that may take him down. Trump gave out thousands of copies of his own book to Republican Convention attendees, and then he used campaign money to pay $55,055 to Barnes & Noble to cover the cost of the books. But because Trump makes royalties on that book, his use of campaign funds to buy those books was strictly illegal.
And so even as Trump has bilked his campaign donors into giving him millions of dollars that he’s funneled to himself for everything from fuel his private jet, to inexplicably diverting campaign funds to his own golf courses, it appears that a technicality over a mere $55,055 may be what has finally tripped him up.