(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Hotel mogul Robert Bigelow said Tuesday that he had donated $1 million to help former President Donald Trump with his legal fees as the verdicts in two partisan lawfare attacks being waged in New York threaten to deplete the GOP presidential frontrunner of a large portion of his personal wealth.
Bigelow, the Las Vegas-based owner of Budget Suites of America, also pledged a much larger fund to one of Trump’s affiliated campaign groups, Reuters reported.
“I gave him $1 million towards his legal fees a few weeks ago,” he said. “I made a promise to give him $20 million more, that will be to the super PAC.”
It follows a March 2023 donation he made of just over $20 million to the Ron DeSantis-affiliated Never Back Down super PAC, according to OpenSecrets.
Bigelow—whose net worth is currently estimated to be between $700 million and $1 billion—said he felt bad for the former president.
“I was just sympathetic. They didn’t solicit anything from me,” Bigelow said. The $20 million would be spread out but “starts right away.”
Bigelow said he had a pleasant dinner with Trump Monday night to talk over his legal and financial situation.
“It was supposed to be one hour. It was over two hours. And we still ran out of time,” he said.
Depending on the success of Trump’s appeals, however, the $1 million will not go far in covering the massive expenditures that he faces.
Recently, for instance, a jury awarded serial rape accuser E. Jean Carroll with $83 million over allegations that Trump had defamed her while fending off her claims about a more than 30-year-old sexual assault.
He also faces an impending ruling from judge Arthur Engoron, who may determine that Trump is on the hook for $370 million in penalties, based on alleged misrepresentation of his net worth, in a civil lawsuit being prosecuted by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
In 2023 alone, Trump spent more than $50 million on legal fees, the New York Times reported, with no end in sight for 2024.
Excluding the political efforts to keep him off the ballot in Colorado and Maine, for which he may tap into his sizable campaign war chest, the former president has yet to endure at least four major cases in the coming year, with 91 criminal charges stemming from indictments by leftist prosecutors in Georgia, Florida, New York and the District of Columbia.
Following Bigelow’s acknowledgement of the donation, David Cay Johnston, author of the 2022 book The Big Cheat : How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family,” mocked Trump for allegedly begging for money in a Tuesday CNN appearance, the Huffington Post reported.
“Remember Donald used to tell us he was worth $10 billion?” Johnston said. “He should be rolling in money if that’s the case. And evidently, he has to depend on begging for money from people.”
Trump isn’t the only high-profile figure with a political benefactor. Hunter Biden, the son of president Joe Biden, currently faces at least two major criminal cases of his own in Delaware and California, in addition to a deposition before the House Oversight and Judicial committees who are leading an impeachment probe against his father.
During the legal proceedings over Biden’s alleged tax fraud, it came to light that a billionaire pal, Kevin Morris, aka Biden’s “sugar brother,” had “loaned” the troubled ex-drug-addict at least $6.5 million to cover delinquent taxes ahead of the 2020 election.
Morris also said during a House deposition that he currently held Biden’s 10% stake in BHR Partners, a joint business venture with Chinese officials that has come under scrutiny amid allegations of illegal money-laundering and influence peddling while Joe Biden was vice president.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
