Details About Lara Trump And Kimberly Guilfoyle's Controversial Campaign Payday
It's no secret that former President Donald Trump is exorbitantly wealthy, and the same goes for the people closest to him — controversially, in large part because of him. Since beginning his campaign for the 2016 presidential nomination, Trump and his associates have spun a tangled web of money sharing between political fundraising campaigns, Trump-owned businesses, and other private entities that have resulted in major paydays for those closest to the ex-POTUS.
Two women who have benefited from this shadowy financial technique are Lara Trump, Ivanka Trump lookalike and wife of Donald's second-eldest son, Eric Trump, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. In April 2020, GOP insiders told HuffPost that Lara and Guilfoyle were each receiving $180,000 a month in relation to their work with the then-POTUS. The only problem? The payments weren't coming from Donald; they were coming from his campaign manager's private business.
Anonymous sources close to White House operations told HuffPost that the women were receiving payments from Bradley Parscale's marketing firm Parscale Strategy. While some accused the Trump team of unfairly working around Federal Election Commission guidelines, Parscale offered HuffPost a glib, "I can pay them however I want to pay them" when asked about the money stream. So, how did these campaign payouts work?
People weren't happy with the lack of transparency with Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle's paychecks
The main issue with Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle's six-figure salaries is, in a word, transparency. While it's perfectly normal for political officials to be paid for their work, the Federal Election Commission requires that these payments are fully disclosed to the public. By funneling money made through political fundraising organizations and other similar groups through private businesses, these payments — despite coming from virtually the same pool of money — are no longer legally required to be made public.
This makes it far more difficult for donors to know where, exactly, their money is going. And we're not talking chump change, either. In a complaint to the FEC filed in July 2020, the Campaign Legal Center accused Donald Trump-supported organizations of "laundering nearly $170 million in campaign spending through firms headed by Trump's former campaign manager, Bradley Parscale, and other firms created by Trump campaign lawyers."
Part of that $170 million was, according to initial reporting by The New York Times in March 2020, going directly into Lara and Guilfoyle's pockets. "A lot of people close to Donald Trump are getting rich off of his campaign," Paul Ryan, campaign finance legal expert, told HuffPost. "They don't want donors to know that they're getting rich because, at the end of the day, it's donor money." What, exactly, Lara and Guilfoyle do in exchange for this money has only added to the convoluted nature of the situation.
What were Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle doing in exchange for these payments?
To be clear, Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle were being paid by Parscale Strategy in exchange for taking on various appointments within Parscale-controlled companies. The problem is that these appointments were related to Donald Trump's political endeavors, which would require financial transparency per the FEC. In 2017, Parscale Strategy hired Lara as a senior consultant and liaison between Parscale and the former president's campaign. Guilfoyle was elected head of Trump Victory, a political fundraising group.
Not everyone with knowledge of the financial situation thinks the women are earning their keep. [Kimberly's] doing stuff, but she's just like this silly cheerleader," an anonymous White House adviser told HuffPost. "She gets on these donor calls, and it's ridiculous." Regardless of what these sources have had to say about it, Guilfoyle clearly believes she's owed the money, as demonstrated by an encounter between Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancée and Parscale Strategy's head, Bradley Parscale, at an Orlando reelection rally in June 2019.
According to witnesses who saw the event, Guilfoyle confronted Parscale and demanded to know why her monthly checks of $15,000 were consistently overdue. Parscale allegedly replied that his wife, Candice Parscale, would investigate the issue. Add these controversial payments to the laundry list of Donald Trump's financial woes, including the hush money trial taking place in the spring of 2024, and the ex-POTUS has quite the complicated money situation on his hands.