The Scandals of Trump: A Cheat Sheet
DAVID A. GRAHAM
AUG 25, 2016
Sales of Donald Trump’s latest book, Crippled America, were decent, if not great—they easily beat out every other Republican candidate except for Ben Carson, according to Nielsen. But the Trump campaign found one way to boost sales: buying the books themselves.
The Daily Beast spotted in FEC filings that Team Trump purchased more than $55,000 worth of the book. (It’s been re-released in paperback with the sunnier title, Great Again.) Now, candidates buying up their own books is nothing new, but there’s a legal issue here. Campaigns can buy books in bulk assuming they don’t pay royalties, because if they do, then the campaign has effectively paid the candidate—which is against the law.
“It’s fine for a candidate’s book to be purchased by his committee, but it’s impermissible to receive royalties from the publisher,” legal expert Paul S. Ryan told the Beast. “That amounts to an illegal conversion of campaign funds to personal use. There’s a well established precedent from the FEC that funds from the campaign account can’t end up in your own pocket.”
Since the campaign bought the books from Barnes and Noble, there’s some question whether they followed the law. And they’re not answering any questions on the record. Meanwhile, The Huffington Post also noted in FEC filings that Donald Trump’s Trump Organization has begun charging the campaign more to rent its headquarters in Trump Tower ever since the candidate moved over from a partially self-funded approach to a donation-centered model ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/donald-trump-scandals/474726/
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