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Saturday, May 2, 2026

Trump’s Shell Spending Scheme Comes Under DOJ Scrutiny - Yahoo! Voices

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Former President Donald Trump’s Save America PAC raised tens of millions of dollars on false claims of election fraud, and now the feds want to know how it was spent.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that special counsel Jack Smith’s team has subpoenaed a “vast array” of Trump vendors, “posing questions related to how money was paid to other vendors, indicating that they are interested in whether some entities were used to mask who was being paid or if the payments were for genuine services rendered.”

While the details of Smith’s inquiry are unknown, we do have something of a road map. The report from the Jan. 6 House Select Committee, along with publicly available Federal Election Commission and IRS filings, can shine a light on some of those vendors, offering some insight into what may have caught the DOJ’s eye.

First, it’s a fact that Trump has literally masked his vendors. Prior to the election, the Trump 2020 campaign had already routed more than three-quarters of a billion dollars in expenses to unknown subvendors through an in-house company, called American Made Media Consultants. That arrangement was targeted in a FEC complaint from watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, which alleged that the campaign used the scheme to effectively launder money and conceal from the public the true recipients of donor funds.

The FEC’s commissioners,...



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