Trump Makes Another Pitch to Appeals Court on Immunity in Election Case
New York TimesJan 01
Robert Bigelow Gives Trump $1M for Legal Fees
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The Facts
In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Robert Bigelow, the owner of Budget Suites of America, said that he had donated $1M toward Donald Trump's legal fees amid the multiple civil and criminal cases against the former US president and would be donating another $20M to a Trump super PAC.
Bigelow, who originally supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis before he stepped out of the GOP race, said his reason for helping Trump is because he's "sympathetic," also noting that Trump's team "didn't solicit anything" from him. This comes as Trump was recently ordered to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83M as a result of her defamation case against him.
The Spin
Anti-Trump narrative
In classic Trump fashion, the former president-turned-criminal defendant is using other people's money to pay for his own mess. Trump is drowning in legal bills and faces potentially sky-high penalties from other ongoing cases. He already had to scrape $50M in donations to pay legal fees last year, and that number will only increase as prosecutors continue to beat him in court.
Pro-Trump narrative
Unlike fraudulent neoconservatives such as Nikki Haley, whose number one donor is a Democrat, Trump is receiving financial help to fight the political prosecutions being waged against him. Bigelow's donations aren't bailing out Trump but rather attempting to prevent the leading GOP candidate and his supporters from losing this election to Haley or Biden — who are both merely two sides of the same coin.
