Foreign politicians to Trump: Stop ‘begging’ for money

Although the Trump campaign released a statement last week claiming that the loan was “fully extinguished”, NBC News reported Thursday that there is no Federal Election Commission record proving that those funds had been converted to donations, and campaign staffers have refused to provide the legal paperwork proving that the transaction was complete.

Last week, campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks said Trump was submitting formal paperwork forgiving the loan on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Brendan Fischer, associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told Global News the complaint is not a partisan attack on the Trump campaign but an effort to ensure campaigns are abiding by the law.

In his most recent FEC filing, posted June 20, Trump treated all his spending on the campaign as loans. An FEC member told NBC News that “there is no new filing changing Trump’s loans”, and the FEC’s candidate tracking page, which posts filings, confirms that.

The Trump Campaign has struggled to pivot to fundraising after the primaries, posting only $1.2 million cash on hand.

Trump’s campaign allegedly sent Icelandic, Scottish, Australian and British politicians fundraising emails asking for donations after the “Brexit” vote took place and as Trump promoted his golf course in Scotland, the complaint contends.

The groups allege that the Trump campaign should have been aware that there were foreign nationals on its email list – and that it continued to send such emails even after the media began reporting on instances of such solicitations. And there seems to be a lot of evidence to back up the group’s claims.

“It would be disclosed on the campaign’s next FEC report”, says Michael Toner, former FEC Chairman. The next monthly report is due July 20.

[A] wave of fundraising pleas [were] inexplicably sent by the Trump campaign in recent days to lawmakers in the United Kingdom, Iceland, Australia and elsewhere. Mitt Romney made a similar revision when forgiving some of his loans in 2011. In the solicitation, “Trump pledged personally to match any donation made in the next 48 hours from his own pocket”, the Iceland Monitor reported.

Given Trump’s repeated insistence that this is a done deal, it is not clear why his campaign won’t release the paperwork yet.