Nikki Haley has finally decided to go on offense against her former boss, Donald Trump. Earlier in the week, the former UN Ambassador hit the Trump campaign for not paying its bills, especially to local police officers who often get hired to serve as extra security.
“Haley wants to make sure police and their families are paid – apparently, Donald Trump doesn’t care,” Ken Farnaso, a spokesman for the former South Carolina governor told USA Today.
The Haley team brought up the issue amid polls showing that she and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis battling for second place in GOP primaries – both more than 45 percentage points behind Trump, according to an averaging of national polls by Real Clear Politics.
In going after the front-runner, the Haley campaign was responding to a Raw Story website piece detailing the latest on a long-running complaint against Trump: his campaign hasn’t reimbursed local law enforcement costs of a Trump visit.
The Haley campaign said it has “paid $1,722 total to six New Hampshire police departments throughout July and August.”
According to the former South Carolina governor, New Hampshire law enforcement officials in Concord are owed $3,788 by the Trump campaign, while $12,870 is owed to Manchester.
This isn’t the first time that conservatives have been annoyed about how the Trump campaign spends its money. In August, The New York Times reported, “The political action committee that former President Donald J. Trump is using to pay his legal bills faced such staggering costs this year that it requested a refund on a $60 million contribution it made to another group supporting the Republican front-runner, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The decision signals a potential money crisis for Mr. Trump, who has so far refused to pay his own voluminous bills directly and has also avoided creating a legal-defense fund for himself and people who have become entangled in the various investigations related to him.”
While his campaign has struggled with its money, Jack Smith, the Biden prosecutor dogging the former president with federal indictments, has been working diligently to seize the money Trump has. Smith, or his legal allies, allegedly investigating whether or not it is fraud to raise money for a presidential campaign but use the cash to pay for personal lawyers.
New Conservative Post reported that “Jack Smith’s office interviewed Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner and longtime associate of former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, about Save America PAC’s fundraising efforts. The interview occurred amid indications that federal prosecutors were probing how the money raised by Save America, the president’s Super PAC, was spent, and whether the money was raised under false pretenses.
Speaking to MSNBC, FBI agent Andrew Weismann said “that if Trump’s fundraising finances do become a part of Smith’s federal probe, then it could lead to “pretrial forfeiture” which would result in the money being frozen and unable to be accessed. This could cause a particular problem for the former president, as tens of millions of dollars given to his PAC were reportedly spent on his and other Trump-linked defendants’ legal fees this year, Weissmann said
‘There could be other funds that are available, but if they are funds that have been obtained by fraud—obviously the government would have to prove that—you can get pretrial seizure orders,’ Weissmann continued.
The police officers in Manchester might be a little lower on the financial priority list.
[Read More: You Won’t Believe What The ACLU Is Defending Now]
