Donald Trump’s presidential campaign raised less than half as much as Kamala Harris' campaign during the month of July—and Harris didn’t even enter the race until July 21. That’s an astounding comparison, but there’s something even stranger lurking behind those numbers.

Trump’s fundraising for July was actually up compared to previous months, driven mostly by a burst of donations that came in after a failed assassination attempt on July 13. Even so, the total of $138.7 million raised by the Trump campaign was dwarfed by the $310 million Harris collected in barely over a week. 

An amazing 94% of the money Harris collected reportedly came in donations smaller than $200, with two-thirds of the money coming from first-time donors. In comparison, Trump’s July Federal Elections Commission filing showed less than $7.5 million coming in the form of small donations. This makes it seem as if, even during a month where Trump was screaming about “taking a bullet for the country,” his MAGA well was going dry.

Maybe that’s because some of his supporters have discovered that Trump campaign donations are going into a mysterious black hole—a scam so large that it makes Trump University and the Trump Foundation look like peanuts.

As The New York Times reports, during the 2020 election cycle, $516 million of the $780 million spent by the Trump campaign—an astounding 66%—went to one company: American Made Media Consultants. Of the 150 largest bills paid by the campaign, 132 were from AMMC. None of these bills was itemized to explain what the campaign received for these massive expenditures.

American Made Media Consultants is a Delaware-based private company that appears to be carefully constructed for no other purpose than to hide where the money goes once it comes across the threshold. Even Trump’s campaign staff officially doesn’t know what AMMC does with the money. However, ABC News reported in 2020 that AMMC is largely run by former Trump campaign director Brad Parscale. 

In any case, what’s clear about AMMC is … nothing. 

The Federal Election Commission requires candidates to disclose where funds are being spent, expressly so that donors know that their candidate is not just sticking the money in his pocket. In 2020, an FEC complaint was filed charging Trump’s campaign with using AMMC to hide expenses and not providing donors with information. FEC commissioners deadlocked in a 3-3 vote over whether Trump’s campaign had violated disclosure laws. Then the case was dropped. Attempts to revive it in court ran into a wall because some FEC decisions are considered “unreviewable.”

The Times reports that AMMC’s first president was Lara Trump. Now that Trump’s daughter-in-law has moved on to turning the Republican National Committee into a grifting engine, AMMC’s current leadership is unclear. However, offspring Eric Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner have been involved in setting up and operating AMMC.

Whatever AMMC does, it’s still doing it. Trump’s 2024 campaign is following the same pattern as in 2020, with a large percentage of funds simply handed off to AMMC, with no information on what is generated in return.

However, as the Times reports, it’s not the only such company that benefits from Trump’s campaign funds. A second private company, Red Curve Solutions, has received at least $18 million. According to the Campaign Legal Center, Red Curve is used to pay Trump’s legal bills, with the money that it spends then being reimbursed by Trump’s PACs. The head of Red Curve is also the head of two PACs, so it’s all handled very neatly.

That’s not the last of Trump’s mystery companies. As NBC News reported in June, another Delaware-based LLC named Launchpad Strategies has taken in almost $15 million. Because of the way it’s set up, there is no public knowledge of who owns the company, who works for it, or how any of this money has been spent.

It’s long been clear that money coming into Trump’s campaign was going to pay his legal bills. Trump has even advertised to his followers, directly begging them to pay for his army of attorneys. He’s made those pleas and taken money from decidedly not-wealthy supporters even though his net worth has gone up by billions over the past few years. 

The truth is, all the tacky shoes, Bibles, and NFTs that Trump sells are a drop in the bucket. So is the $7.5 million in small-dollar donations he got in July. 

Trump’s big money comes in the form of big checks. The four biggest megadonors on The Washington Post’s list all cut checks to Trump. That includes $125 million from railroad heir Timothy Mellon (and that’s not counting the $25 million Mellon spent setting up a spoiler campaign for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).

These billionaires cut Trump big checks, then the checks go into a big black hole. What comes out doesn’t appear to be any recognizable campaign activity. Even before Harris entered the race, President Joe Biden was outspending Trump three-to-one on television advertising.

The money going into these companies seems to disappear … which certainly makes it hard to discern whether Trump is running his campaign in a legitimate fashion or simply pocketing hundreds of millions in bribes.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.