Cities seek more than $750K in unpaid bills for Trump campaign events since 2016

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Yahoo! News/NBC News

Fri, October 11, 2024 at 9:01 AM EDT


Former President Donald Trump held a third rally last month in Erie, Pennsylvania, which sits in the northwest corner of a swing state that could decide who wins the White House.

Like the two other times Trump has been to Erie to rev up his supporters, he left without paying the bill. City officials haven't yet tallied up what the Trump campaign owes Erie for public safety costs for his most recent rally in September.

But according to a city official, Trump owes the city more than $40,000 for the rallies he held there in 2018 and 2023. Erie, whose bills were previously reported by the Erie Times-News, isn't the only city that has hosted Trump rallies and not been paid by the campaign.

Including Erie, four cities and a county confirmed to NBC News that they're still waiting for the Trump campaign to pay bills often associated with reimbursements for the costs of local law enforcement and other first responder personnel. The final price tag is more than $750,000 for those five jurisdictions, with some bills dating back eight years.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/cities-seek-more-750k-unpaid-130100196.html

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Don the Deadbeat

He's fucked over people his entire life.

[alwaysinasnit]

2. I wonder if the campaign is reporting to the FEC that it paid those expenses without actually

doing so, and then funneling that money to tsf's legal team.

[WiseElder]

3. Serves them right

For being so stupid as to not collect in advance. Everyone knows Trump is a deadbeat.

[Golden Raisin]

4. Good luck collecting anything from the "Billionaire"

or his Campaign.

[JoetheShow]

5. Fooled you once, shame on him.

Fooled you three times!!? What were you idiots thinking!?? Get the money before providing services. You obviously haven't been paying attention.

[brewens]

6. He owes Spokane, WA. The city closest to me. It's big money to those cities but should be a joke to him.

I can't believe one of his big donors didn't specify he use the funds to pay those places off or just do it for him in his name. That would have been a better use of funds than what he ended up wasting a lot of on.

[LilElf70]

7. One would think,,,,,,

Fool me once? Fool me twice? Fool me 3 times?

You're obviously dumber than owl shit to let him do it again. Why anyone would even allow him back after the first mistake sure says a lot about your intelligence. Stupid is as stupid does.

Do these people still not understand how the grifter works? Even after all the people he's screwed over? Can they not see it's all about him?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

8. Deadbeat Donnie

When you're MAGA king they let you do it.

[SunSeeker]

9. Why aren't they suing him? This amounts to campaign contributions to Trump using tax dollars!

[BumRushDaShow]

11. They have been suing him

but cases like this tend to fall to the bottom of the totem pole for court priority (probably because they are generally civil cases - e.g., as a breach of contract).

[SunSeeker]

14. Why did Erie, PA keep giving him facilities (in 2023 and Sep. 2024) after he stiffed them in 2018?

[BumRushDaShow]

15. I expect like most governmental administrative offices

they have a SOP of sending out billing notices with deadlines for responses and may have only gotten "partial responses" and "partial payments" along the way... and 45's operation has learned how to string that sort of thing along for years.

That "string-along" strategy is what happened to NARA when right after the election some time in December 2020, they were asking 45 for those boxes of White House artifacts and other government property (including what ended up being classified documents) to be gathered and handed over to NARA. 45's lawyers sent "responses" back on the last days of the deadlines, and then eventually scheduled to give some back. And then when NARA said "but what about these...?", that again got a response by the last day of the deadline that maybe said, "well we'll certainly look for it and here is some other things we found".

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I.e., as long as there was some "responsiveness to comply", then it is harder to go cold turkey in court to demand some kind of remedy (and they know it).

Some municipalities have told them that they were done.

The problem with Erie is that just enough either stayed home in the city or voted for 45, to flip the county in 2016. It flipped back in 2020, but I also expect many of the small businesses there wanted the $$$ from the attendees, so there is pressure coming from the residents.

[Hotler]

10. I don't see cities seeking payment. I see cities that are still to this day afraid of the orange one.

Oh well, that's on them.

[Farmer-Rick]

12. Why do they keep letting him come back?

If I didn't pay my bill at a restaurant, they wouldn't let me back in for another meal, or a 3rd meal. Seems they love giving away their citizens' wealth to Trump.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. You might have noticed him suddenly doing all these "outdoor" rallies

as well as doing "airplane hangar" ones. That's probably because he was refused a venue due to non-payment in the past or not wanting to host a political event.

But what has now happened since Butler, the SS has advised against "outdoor", so that has forced the campaign to find some sucker city to host the rallies.