It says that Mueller is looking into and then we are assuming Federal Prosecutors in NY.
Read on what was raisedâŚwho was involved, and how much did Rick Gates give up.
So heâd need money â a lot of money. Itâs not unusual for presidents to raise money for this purpose. Most recently, Obama raised about $53 million for his first inauguration and $43 million for his second. Trump decided to follow suit. Rather than fund the inauguration himself, the wealthiest president-elect ever decided to follow his predecessorsâ lead and raise the cash from billionaires, wealthy financiers, and corporations.
So a week after the election, Trump named a murderersâ row of uberrich Republicans as âfinance vice chairsâ for the event. They included casino billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn (the latter of whom was later accused of sexually abusing employees), defense contractor Elliott Broidy (later involved in hush money payments to a Playboy model), and Anthony Scaramucci (later White House communications director for 10 days before resigning over an obscene interview with the New Yorker).
The man in charge of it all, as chair of the inaugural committee, was Tom Barrack. Heâs a billionaire real estate investor whoâs been a close friend of Trumpâs for decades, and his business interests have recently been concentrated in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. (The Washington Postâs Michael Kranish and the New York Timesâs David Kirkpatrick have both written excellent profiles of him.) His goal, he said, was for the inauguration to have a âsoft sensualityâ and a âpoetic cadence.â
To help with the planning and fundraising, Barrack turned to a Trump campaign aide: Rick Gates, the longtime right-hand man to Paul Manafort. (Barrack had known Manafort since the 1970s and helped convince Trump to bring him on to the campaign.)
Even at the time, the choice raised eyebrows since Manafort had been ousted from the campaign after scandal-laden stories about his work for pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine. But according to a November 2016 report by Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News, Gates became instrumental in fundraising and planning. Isikoff quoted a source calling Gates the âshadowâ chair of the inauguration and Barrackâs âchief deputy.â
(Manafort and Gates have both since agreed to plea deals with special counsel Robert Mueller. Both men agreed to cooperate with government investigators, but Muellerâs team concluded that Manafort breached that agreement by lying to them.)
Trumpâs inauguration raised an incredible amount of money
In the end, the inauguration crowd wasnât exactly the largest in history â but the inaugural fundraising certainly was. Barrack, Gates, and the team raked in more than $106 million, an astonishing sum that doubled the previous record (set by Obama in 2009).
The more you gave, the more exclusive events you got access to. Among other perks, it took $1 million to get you into the âLeadership Luncheonâ at Trumpâs hotel, $500,000 for a dinner with Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and $250,000 for a candlelight dinner at Union Station with the Trumps and Pences, according to a document obtained by the Center for Public Integrityâs Carrie Levine.
You can read through the full donor list at OpenSecrets.org, but among those willing to fork over such sums were:
Finance industry big shots: Robert Mercer (whom the New Yorker later dubbed âthe reclusive hedge-fund tycoon behind the Trump presidencyâ), Paul Singer (another hedge fund billionaire who funds the Washington Free Beacon website, which, oddly enough, had paid the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump during the primaries), and Steve Cohen (whose hedge fund group was closed down due to insider trading allegations) all donated $1 million each.
Corporate America: The inaugural committee raised $2 million from AT&T; $1 million each from Bank of America, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Pfizer, and Qualcomm; and at least $500,000 each from JPMorgan Chase, FedEx, Chevron, Exxon, Fidelity, Intel, Citgo, and BP America.
Secretive conservative groups: The American Action Network, a dark-money nonprofit thatâs spent tens of millions on elections since 2010, gave $1 million. Another million came in from a mysterious shell company called âBH Group, LLC,â and its true source remained mysterious for more than a year. Only this year did journalist Robert Maguire trace that contribution to a group tied to the conservative legal movement and Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo, whoâs found a prominent role advising Trump on judicial nominations.
And then there were those donors with major ties to Russia and other foreign countries, who reportedly caught Muellerâs interest.
ABC News reported that Mueller was questioning witnesses âabout millions of dollars in donations to President Donald Trumpâs inauguration committeeâ â specifically about âdonors with connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.â
The Associated Press reported that Muellerâs investigators interviewed inauguration chair Tom Barrack. The APâs sources, however, gave conflicting accounts on what Barrack was asked about. One said he was asked only about Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Another claimed the questioning included âfinancial matters about the campaign, the transition and Trumpâs inauguration in January 2017.â
In June, another ABC News report stated that Muellerâs investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with âdeep ties to Russiaâ got access to âexclusive, invitation-only receptionsâ during the inauguration.
What happened to the money?
Beyond the many questions about money collected by the inaugural committee, there have long been many questions about money going out of it.
In Marritzâs great piece on this topic for WNYC and ProPublica, several people involved in previous inaugurations were quoted expressing puzzlement over how Trumpâs team could have possibly spent more than $100 million for what they got.
Unlike a campaign, the inaugural committee isnât legally required to disclose very much about its spending. In its nonprofit tax form, the committee is required to break down its expenses in broad categories and to list its five biggest vendors. But it is not required to explain every line item.
In any case, according to the tax form, about half the money â more than $50 million â went to just two vendors. $25.8 million went to WIS Media Partners, an event production firm started by a now-former adviser to Melania Trump. Another $25 million went to Hargrove Inc. for âevent production.â What these firms did with those massive sums of cash is unknown.
That leaves about $50 million remaining. From that, about $10 million in total went to another three vendors, $4.6 million was paid out as salaries, and $5 million was left over and given out as grants. But where tens of millions more went remains a mystery, beyond the broadest of categories given on the disclosure forms.
For now, whether this was sloppy financial mismanagement or something shadier is unclear. But if there is anyone who might know where much of the money went, itâs Rick Gates. And whatever he knows, federal prosecutors now know too.
