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Trump campaign legal bills topped $1 million in three months

Posted at 4:18 PM, Oct 15, 2017
and last updated 2017-10-15 18:18:49-04

By Eli Watkins, CNN

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign spent more than $1 million on legal consulting from July through September, a finance report posted Sunday showed.

Most of the reelection effort’s legal spending went to the law firm Jones Day and the offices of lawyer Alan Futerfas, with tens of thousands directed to a handful of other offices, including more than $25,000 to the Trump Corporation.

CNN previously reported the Republican National Committee spent more than $230,000 in August to cover legal fees for Trump, including more than $130,000 to his personal attorney Jay Sekulow.

A report submitted to the Federal Elections Commission earlier this year showed the Trump campaign paid $50,000 to Futerfas’ firm shortly after Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner amended his security clearance form to reflect a previously undisclosed meeting between top Trump campaign figures and several others, including Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The FEC report Sunday showed the campaign paid nearly $240,000 to Futerfas’ firm in July and August.

Futerfas has represented the President’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., in response to inquiries about his role in the campaign and a meeting he held in Trump Tower last year under the premise of obtaining damaging information on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Revelations about the meeting that Trump Jr., Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort had with Veselnitskaya in 2016 brought on waves of new scrutiny and precipitated requests from Capitol Hill for testimony.

Trump himself has taken on several lawyers to represent him as he and his associates deal with sprawling investigations about Russian interference in the 2016 election and any potential coordination between those associates and Russia.