Some involved in Trump cases could face financial ruin even if acquitted as legal costs soar

In a social media post last month, Jenna Ellis appeared to hint at the concerns of many caught up in criminal cases involving Donald Trump, that they could face financial ruin even if not themselves convicted.

Ellis is a lawyer who once worked for the former president. She is one of the 19 people facing trial in Georgia on charges they were involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“I was reliably informed Trump isn’t funding any of us who are indicted,” she said.

She wondered why Trump’s movement – Maga Inc, as she described it – was not funding the defence of all those facing trial.

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Involvement in court cases in the United States can be very expensive. Even responding to demands for evidence or documents under subpoena powers can be costly.

And it is not only those featuring in criminal cases in which Trump personally is a defendant who are facing hefty bills.

Peter Navarro, a former economic adviser to Trump in the White House, was convicted on Thursday by a jury over failure to comply with a subpoena issued by the congressional committee that last year investigated the January 6th 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

He argued he could not testify or provide documents as sought by the committee as Trump had invoked executive privilege over the material.

Navarro has maintained that the Washington trial will cost him about $750,000 and likely appeals, potentially right up to the US supreme court, could cost another $1 million.

Conservatives contend the current series of prosecutions against Trump and his allies are aimed at disrupting his campaign to win back the White House and to hurt his closest supporters in the process. Some describe it as “Democrat lawfare”.

Democrats, on the other hand, argue that the legal cases are the consequences of actions taken by Trump and his allies to hold on to power after he lost the 2020 election.

Trump’s side has already spent enormous sums on legal fees in dealing with his various issues over the past two years. His political action committee, Save United States, said in an official filing that it had paid out more than $21 million in the first six months of the year.

This was in addition to the $16 million it spent in the previous two years on legal fees.

Trump covered the legal bills of aides, advisers and employees that were incurred during the investigation by the January 6th committee and the subsequent federal inquiries. This included his two co-defendants in the case about Trump’s handling of classified documents, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.

But there has been no indication as of yet that Trump will pay the legal costs of his 18 fellow defendants in the wide-ranging prosecution taking place in Georgia.

Trump has claimed he “does not know a lot of these people”.

[ Donald Trump indictment: Georgia grand jury report on election interference to be released ]

Ellis has drifted away from the world of Trump and is now backing his rival Ron DeSantis – a move that is unlikely to make the former president more amenable to helping out financially.

In the absence of direct aid from Trump to pay legal bills, Ellis and a number of other accused have sought to raise money through crowdfunding campaigns.

The publication Forbes reported this week that Ellis had generated nearly $200,000 so far to pay for her legal expenses.

Forbes said that Trump’s former lawyer and now co-defendant John Eastman had raised more than $521,000 for his legal fund.

It said two other co-defendants, former US department of justice official Jeffrey Clark, and Cathy Latham, the former Republican Party chairwoman in Coffee County in southeast Georgia, had generated more than $60,000 and $18,000, respectively.

And then there is Rudy Giuliani – another of Trump’s former lawyers and now also a co-defendant in Georgia. Counsel for the former New York mayor told a court last month he was “having financial difficulties”.

The New York Times reported last month that Giuliani could be facing $3 million in legal expenses. But at the same time he also believed he is owed substantial sums by Trump for work carried out after the 2020 election. Trump’s political action committee paid $340,000 to a data vendor hosting Giuliani’s records, federal filings show.

On Thursday night Trump took part in a fundraising dinner to help Giuliani pay for his bills. Donors were asked to pay $100,000. The event could raise in excess of $1 million.

There were also reports on Thursday that Trump and his family may host another fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in the coming weeks to generate money to pay for legal expenses of fellow defendants and witnesses in the cases against him.

Legal and political observers in the US argue that it is in Trump’s interest to keep close to his co-defendants – or certainly not leave them so worried about financial costs that they would do a deal with prosecutors, a practice known in US justice circles as “flipping”.

Such deals are perfectly plausible. On Wednesday it emerged that a Trump employee in Florida had reached a co-operation agreement with the special counsel prosecuting the former president in the case involving the retention of classified documents. The employee has agreed to testify and, in return, will not face any charges.