Former President Donald Trump failed to pay several of the attorneys who assisted him in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election after they tried to collect payment for their work, CNBC reports, citing testimony to congressional investigators and Federal Election Commission records. The lawyers incurred the losses despite their lawsuits baseless fraud allegations helping Trump’s campaign raise $250 million in donations in the aftermath of the November vote, according to the final report from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump’s closest ally and former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was among the slate of stiffed lawyers. Timothy Parlatore, a lawyer for Giuliani ally Bernard Kerik, Trump and the former New York City mayor had a handshake agreement that Giuliani and his team would be paid for their post-election work. However, the Trump campaign’s finance records showed that it fell short of that promise, only reimbursing Giuliani’s companies for travel and not the $20,000 a day he requested. “Lawyers and law firms that didn’t do s— were paid lots of money and the people that worked their ass off, got nothing,” Kerik complained in a 2021 tweet.
The FEC records and testimony from the House Jan. 6 Select Committee also indicate that, alongside Giuliani, none of the private-sector lawyers identified in the special counsel’s election case — Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman — were compensated for the work they did for Trump after the 2020 election. All four lawyers were charged alongside the former president on Monday in Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling RICO case.
