Arminius

 

Trump campaign spent $55,000 of donor funds to buy thousands of copies of his own book

 

Donald Trump used $55,000 of campaign funds to buy thousands of copies of his own book from a retail store, a purchase that could be illegal, the Daily Beast reported Wednesday.

 

The funds went toward buying his book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, from Barnes & Noble — copies of which were handed out as gifts at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to the Daily Beast.

 

The site reported that the $55,000 purchase would amount to 3,500 copies of the hard copy version of the book, or 5,000 copies of the paperback version, which was renamed Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America.

 

If Trump accepts royalties from the publisher on the book, purchasing that many copies would amount to shifting donor funds back into his own bank account, an illegal practice, campaign finance experts told the Daily Beast.

 

"It's fine for a candidate's book to be purchased by his committee, but it's impermissible to receive royalties from the publisher," Paul Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, told the site. "That amounts to an illegal conversion of campaign funds to personal use."

 

The book purchasing news came two days after the Huffington Post reportedthat Trump hiked up the rent on the office space his campaign is utilizing for its headquarters at Trump Tower in New York — which Trump himself owns.

 

The  Huffington Post  reported that Trump raised the rent  almost  five-fold to  to $169,758 a month  â€” an increase that came as Trump shifted to raising money from donors, rather than self-financing his campaign. 

 

According to his July fundraising report filed to the Federal Elections Commission, Trump has spent at least $7.7 million of his campaign funds toward Trump-owned companies, as well as to his children, who have been a staple on the campaign, Vice reported. 

 

Trailing Hillary Clinton badly in the polls, it's possible that Trump's campaign will now find itself on the receiving end of attacks from the Democratic nominee over his campaign expenses.

 

"If I was a donor, I'd want answers," an RNC member told the Huffington Post. "If they don't have any more staff, and they're paying five times more? That's the kind of stuff I'd read and try to make an (attack) ad out of it."

 

http://www.businessi...own-book-2016-8

 

Obviously to boost it on the top seller list. I think the donors would be happy.

Too young to remember Carter, but I can't possibly see how he had a worse record than Hillary. She already did a Nixon with those emails.

He's going to lose YUGE. SAD!!!

Hillary is slightly in the lead against Hitler. All he needs to do is convince people he's in fact not the ultimate evil.

Should be doable, even for Donald Trump. They've set the bar pretty low.

I'm certainly open to the possibility that he's a unique enough candidate from outside the establishment that turnout of various groups could be unpredictable.  What I have trouble believing is that any such unpredictable bump would overcome all those negatives plus the massive trouble he's in with women and minorities.  He would need quite the surge of angry white guys to overcome the hole he finds himself in.  But there's still two months...

You're forgetting that unpredictability applies to every level. There's no way of knowing for sure how big these bumps actually are. With a controversial candidate like Trump they might be significant. Lots of people don't like to admit they're going for him, and you can hardly blame them with how the media are doing their best to portray him as a literal love child of Adolf Hitler and Bozo the Clown.

It becomes especially relevant when you consider the fact that the experts completely failed to predict his nomination as candidate just months ago.

Trump could use some acting skills. 

His lack of slick is part of the appeal I think.

We'll see in a few months. I don't think any polling formula can predict unexpected events. Not being able to see a choice you don't understand and all that.