Who financed Trump's inauguration: an investigation launched in New York

A record amount of $107 million was spent on the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.

The expensive inauguration of US President Donald Trump became the reason for a criminal investigation launched by the Manhattan prosecutor's office. A record $107 million was spent on the inauguration, and legal authorities are examining whether the White House made concessions to donors in exchange for funding the event. Writes about this DW with reference to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which has informed sources.

According to the publication, the investigation launched against the background of the case of former lawyer Trump Michael Cohen, is still at an early stage. Prosecutors suspect that some of the funds for Trump's inauguration could have been provided in exchange for political concessions, influence on political figures, or access to the future US administration.

A Manhattan prosecutor declined to comment.

Rick Gates, a former Trump aide who helped lead the inaugural committee, reached a plea deal with Mueller in February and is also cooperating with prosecutors.

This news is not considered unexpected. About where exactly the money went after Trump's inauguration, there are more and more questions, writes Vox.

Trump's inaugural committee has collected a truly amazing $ 106,7 million, which is twice the previous record set at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 year. But what they did with it is not so clear.

In a report for ProPublica and WNYC published by Ilya Marritz earlier this year, George W. Bush's second inauguration chairman, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “They had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events, and they raised at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So the obvious question is: where did it go?” I don't know".

Tom Barack planned Trump's inauguration - with the help of Rick Gates

After Donald Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 presidential election, he was tasked with organizing an inauguration worthy of his name and rich reputation. The event itself, surrounding security and logistics are paid for by the federal government. But for all the big parties and events before and after he was sworn in—a concert at the National Mall, dinners and events for elite supporters, and balls on inauguration night—Trump had to find the money himself.

So he needed money - a lot of money. It is not unusual for presidents to raise money for this purpose. More recently, Obama raised about $53 million for his first inauguration and $43 million for his second. Trump decided to follow their example. Instead of funding the inauguration himself, the richest president-elect decided to follow the example of his predecessors and raise money from billionaires, wealthy financiers and corporations.

Thus, a week after the election, Trump called a number of “vice-chairmen for finance” for this event. Among them were billionaires casino Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn (the latter of whom was later accused of sexual abuse of employees), defense contractor Elliott Broydi (later participating in the payment of hidden money model Playboy) and Anthony Scaramucci (later White House communications director in the US ).

The man in charge of all this, as well as the chairman of the inaugural committee, was Tom Barrack. He is a billionaire real estate investor who has been a close friend of Trump for decades and whose business interests have recently been concentrated in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

To help with planning and fundraising, Barak turned to Trump's assistant: Rick Gates, Paul Manafort's right hand. (Barak knew Manafort from 1970's and helped convince Trump to get him involved in the campaign.)

Even at the time, the choice raised eyebrows because Manafort had been booted from the campaign following scandalous stories about his work for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. But according to a November report by Yahoo News' Michael Isikoff, Gates played a major role in fundraising and planning. Isikoff quoted a source calling Gates the inauguration's "shadow" chairman and Barack his "first deputy."

(Since then, Manafort and Gates agreed to bargain with Special Attorney Robert Muller. Both agreed to cooperate with government investigators, but Muller’s team concluded that Manafort had violated this agreement by deceiving them.)

Trump's inauguration has collected an incredible amount of money

After all, the inaugural crowd wasn't the largest in history—but the first fundraiser certainly was. Barack, Gates and team earned more than $106 million, an astonishing amount that doubled the previous record (set by Obama in 2009).

The more you gave, the more exclusive events you have access to. For example, 1 had to pay a million dollars to get to the Lunch with Leaders at the Trump Hotel, 500 thousand dollars for lunch with elected Vice President Mike Pence, according to a document received by the Center for Public Integrity Carrie Levine.

You can see the complete list of donors on OpenSecrets.org, but among those who wanted to fork out for such sums were:

• Big bosses in the financial industry: Robert Mercer (whom New Yorker later called the “recluse hedge fund mogul over Trump’s presidency”), Paul Singer (another billionaire hedge fund who funds the Washington Free Beacon website
• Corporate America: First Committee Raises $ 2 Million From AT&T; USD 1 million from Bank of America, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Pfizer and Qualcomm; and at least $ 500 from JPMorgan Chase, FedEx, Chevron, Exxon, Fidelity, Intel, Citgo, and BP America.
• Secretive conservative groups: The American Action Network, a nonprofit organization with “dark” money, which has spent tens of millions on elections since 2010, gave 1 a million dollars. Another million came from a mysterious front company called BH Group, LLC, and its true source remained mysterious for more than a year. Only this year, journalist Robert Maguire traced this contribution to the group associated with the conservative legal movement and the head of the Federalist Society Leonard Leo, who found a prominent role in advising Trump on candidates for judges.

And then there were those donors who had serious ties with Russia and other foreign countries who were reportedly interested in Muller.

What happened to the money?

In addition to the many questions about money raised by the inaugural committee, there have long been many questions about how money is withdrawn from it.

In a wonderful Marritz article on this topic for WNYC and ProPublica, several people who participated in the previous inaugurations talked about the confusion about how the Trump team could spend more than 100 million dollars.

Unlike the campaign, the first committee is not required by law to disclose information about its expenses. In its non-profit tax form, the committee should break up its expenses into broad categories and make a list of the five largest suppliers. But it is not necessary to explain each position.

In any case, about half the money — more than $50 million — went to just two service providers, according to tax forms. The $25,8 million went to WIS Media Partners, the events firm founded by a now-former adviser to Melania Trump. Another $25 million went to Hargrove Inc. for “event creation.” What these firms did with these huge sums of money is unknown.

There are still about 50 million dollars. Of this amount, about $ 10 million were transferred to three more suppliers, $ 4,6 million were paid as wages, and $ 5 million were issued as grants. But where tens of millions more went, remains a mystery.

It is unclear whether this was a careless financially inept guide or something more dubious. But if there is someone who can know where most of the money has gone, it's Rick Gates.

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