Trump’s Business Took In At Least $81,000 From Election-Denying Candidates For Secretary…

The campaigns for three secretary of state candidates who all denied the results of the 2020 presidential election spent $81,000 at properties owned by Donald Trump, according to a report published on Tuesday by government watchdog Issue One.

While all three of these Trump-endorsed candidates lost, preventing them from being in a position to put their thumb on the scale for his 2024 candidacy, they did put cash in his pocket.

One of the most-prominent pushers of Trump’s Big Lie, Arizona State Rep. and Oath Keepers militia member Mark Finchem, was the biggest spender. His campaign dropped $53,000 over four payments to Mar-a-Lago in March through May 2022. He posted photos from May from the former president’s private club, thanking Trump and the MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell for hosting a campaign event.

In August, Michigan’s Kristina Karamo, a poll worker in 2020 who made false claims of ballot fraud, shared a photo of herself standing alongside Trump at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club where he summers. Her campaign reported paying the business $22,000 that month.

The campaign for former Nevada Assemblyman Jim Marchant spent $6,000 at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in 2021, making him the only one of the three candidates who didn’t travel out of state to patronize a Trump property. It’s not as if he hasn’t made such a pilgrimage, though: After losing the election, Marchant shared a photo of himself with the former president at Mar-a-Lago.

Through June 2022, Trump-endorsed candidates for office had paid his businesses at least $1.4 million.

Issue One also identified eight political consultancies, not owned by Trump, that were also “raking in the dough” from the campaigns of election-denying candidates for secretary of state.