President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign continued to spend a sizable chunk of its money on legal fees in the first months of 2018, the continuation of a pattern that emerged last year.
Trump’s reelection campaign spent over $834, 000 on legal consulting fees in the first quarter of 2018, the three month period from Jan. 1 to Mar. 31, according to records from the federal election commission disclosed Sunday afternoon. The campaign spent approximately $3.88 million during this time frame—legal fees constituted 20% of the disbursements.
The payments included $93,000 to the law firm of Charles Harder, who is representing the President in a lawsuit filed by Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she had an affair with Trump a decade ago, and is alleging that the non-disclosure agreement she signed is invalid. The campaign also paid $13, 468 to the law firm of McDermott, Will, and Emery, where Stephen Ryan, the attorney for Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, works.
The percentage of spending on legal fees dropped from the final quarter of 2017. During that time, the campaign spent $1.3 million on legal fees, or 40% of its total spending.
Legal fees, however, are only making a small dent in the campaign’s finances. It raised $10.1 million in the first three months of 2018, and had $28.3 million in cash on-hand by the end of March.