Scamming for America

As Donald Trump rushes to start collecting the $1 billion expected to be necessary to compete for the White House, one of his biggest challenges may come from those claiming to support him.

An increasing number of unauthorized groups are invoking the presumptive GOP nominee’s name to raise money, suggesting that they’ll use the cash to support his campaign, even as some appear to be spending most of their money on contracts with favored consultants.

Trump’s campaign and its allies worry that the groups are doing little to help the campaign and may be doing more harm than good by siphoning off cash that would otherwise go to the campaign’s fledgling fundraising effort. The campaign has disavowed several of the groups, demanding they stop using the candidate’s name in fundraising appeals and calling at least one super PAC founded by a Trump adviser a “big-league scam.” But appeals keep coming from other groups, with more now joining the scrum, and rival groups accusing one another of being scams.

Legal changes and technological developments have paved the way for an explosion of political nonprofit groups, including super PACs, which have rushed to raise money with very little oversight of how they spend it, leading to charges and countercharges of profiteering.

While conservative operatives in recent years have worried that a surge in so-called “scam PACs” has become a scourge on their efforts, the threat they pose to Trump is especially acute. The billionaire real estate showman mostly self-funded his primary campaign, boasting that — unlike his competitors — he wasn’t dependent on donors, and mostly eschewing efforts to create a fundraising operation. His supporters, many of whom are new to political giving and neither well-versed in election law nor attuned to the fine print of political solicitations, may be uniquely susceptible to fundraising appeals from unauthorized groups run by operatives with spotty reputations.

More than two dozen unauthorized groups have formed claiming to support Trump, and they’ve raised a total of $3.7 million this cycle, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings. But only six of the groups have actually bought ads supporting Trump.