Trump’s courting of big donors poses major corruption dangers, experts warn

As Donald Trump has ramped up fundraising from mega-donors for his 2024 presidential campaign and allied Super Pacs, he has increasingly pledged regulatory changes and other policies to boost their businesses, campaign-finance watchdogs have warned.

Experts say Trump's political pitches and maneuverings are a clearly "transactional" chase for big checks, and pose a serious danger of major corruption in a US political system already flooded with powerful donors and lobbyists.

Trump's transactional fundraising style has accelerated, and is underscored by his intense efforts to corral backing and big checks from Elon Musk – the billionaire who owns the social media platform X and is worth $263bn– plus fossil-fuel and crypto currency moguls, while dangling favorable federal policies and perks, say critics.

To boost Trump's electoral fortunes, the Musk-led America Pac had spent almost $60m by mid-September while fossil fuel donors who Trump has courted intensely have ponied up over $20m to other pro-Trump Super Pacs, his campaign and the Republican National Committee, according to OpenSecrets.

"For Trump, political support, as well as access and influence, are all for sale to the wealthiest donors willing to finance Trump's candidacy," said Saurav Ghosh, the director of federal campaign finance reform at the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center. "It is difficult to imagine a more apt description of corruption."

Trump's wooing of Musk, who Trump has suggested could play a big role on a new federal advisory panel, and other super-rich donors have become more crucial to his chances in November as Kamala Harris's presidential campaign has overall outraised Trump's.

In August, for instance, the Harris campaign raised a whopping $190m versus the Trump campaign's haul of $43m, and the Harris campaign is slated to spend more on ads than Trump's in October.

That disparity helps explain why Trump is now heavily focused on hauling in six- and seven-figure checks as he touts regulatory and other policies he would back if he wins in November: Trump's current drive for big checks come even though in his 2016 campaign Trump called Super Pacs, which can take unlimited sums, a "scam" and a "disaster".

Campaign-finance watchdogs voice alarm at Trump's transactional fundraising modus operandi with mega-donors.

"Trump appears to see all politics as transactional," the ex-Federal Election Commission general counsel Larry Noble said, warning that Trump's dealings with Musk "present a number of potential problems".

Noble stressed that Musk "has been aggressively promoting far-right conspiracy theories, lies and memes, many of which call into question the integrity of our elections. Trump's talk about giving Musk a role in advising on government operations in a second Trump administration should frighten anyone who cares about a functioning government."

Other experts concur.

"Trump's general attitude toward fundraising is concerning because it clearly raises the specter of a presidential candidate effectively, and sometimes explicitly, offering political favors – including plum government positions or favorable policies – directly in exchange for contributions," Ghosh added.

Some Republicans, too, express fears about Trump's transactional fundraising style. "Everything to Trump is a deal, whether it's business or politics," said the ex-Republican congressman Dave Trott of Michigan. "Trump doesn't believe rules apply to him ... There's no doubt he's pushing the envelope."

Criticism of Trump's transactional modus operandi escalated when Trump hosted a lavish dinner for about 20 oil and gas bigwigs at Mar-a-Lago in April, where he brazenly pledged regulatory, tax and other favors for their industry, if the executives raised $1bn to help him win in November.

The Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse previously told the Guardian that Trump's pitch to the fossil-fuel leaders "meets the definition of corruption as the founding fathers would have used the term".

Meanwhile, Trump's growing web of fundraising, social media and other ties to Musk, who also heads Tesla and SpaceX, plus Trump's efforts to pull in large checks from cryptocurrency executives, are raising more red flags, say watchdogs.

Critics say that Musk, who endorsed Trump in July, has turned X into a giant megaphone for Trumpist election misinformation, with posts making false claims about non-citizens voting in large numbers in key states.

Since he bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, Musk has reinstated banned accounts of Trump and the conspiracist Alex Jones, plus some white supremacists and neo-Nazis who have spread phoney conspiracies that Haitians abduct pets and practice cannibalism. In early September, Musk posted an AI-generated image of Harris that portrayed her as a communist wearing a red uniform and a hat featuring a hammer and sickle.

Meanwhile, Musk's America Pac has emerged as a major Trump campaign ally by mounting get-out-the-vote operations in several pivotal states. According to OpenSecrets, America Pac had spent about $57m by 17 September to boost Trump's electoral chances with ads and other get out the vote operations.

To date, America Pac's donors include Musk, who has reportedly pledged to pony up millions of dollars to the Pac, and Musk associates such as Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir Technologies, and investor Antonio Gracias.

But some state regulators have shown concerns about the Pac's operations after receiving complaints of misleading information: in August, Michigan and North Carolina officials announced investigations of America Pac's voter registration practices and website.

Lawyers for Musk wrote to officials in both states that they can "rest assured knowing that America Pac is utilizing the data it collects to register voters and encourage them to vote".

The world's richest man, Musk also personally hosted Trump on X on a streamed hour-long event in August giving Trump a valuable shot to reach his audience of about 195 million followers.

Musk was also reportedly a top supporter of JD Vance to be Trump's running mate, and in a post on X called him an "excellent choice".

Enhancing his Musk ties, Trump in September publicly embraced an idea Musk had first touted by announcing a plan to create a wide-ranging government efficiency commission aimed at making big spending cuts if he wins in November, which Musk could lead.

Trump unveiled his new efficiency commission in a speech to the Economic Club of New York, a key business group, where he also touted slashing regulations and big cuts in federal spending. In his pitch, Trump also called for increasing energy production, and embraced cryptocurrencies.

After Trump's speech, Musk modestly wrote on X: "I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises. No pay, no title, no recognition is needed."

Trump earlier teased a key advisory role for the uber-billionaire during their streamed conversation in August. "I need an Elon Musk – I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts. I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states."

Likewise Trump lauded Musk in a 22 September interview "He feels there's so much waste and fat in this country, and he's right."

Noble and other critics raise red flags about Trump's burgeoning links with Musk.

"Musk's promotion of political attacks and lies to his 195 million followers on one of the largest social media platforms in the world which he controls, presents a real danger to our democracy on its own ... Musk's handling of Twitter/X has led to the chaotic firing of staff, dismantling of efforts to monitor hate speech and lies, and the loss of business.

"Trump has dropped the facade of his transactions serving any ideology or purpose other than what he perceives as best for him at any given moment," he added.

Trump's drive to rope in checks and other support from Musk, a cryptocurrency backer, has overlapped Trump moves to garner financial backing from more cryptocurrency titans.

Trump in July spoke at the annual Bitcoin conference where he promised to make America "the crypto capital of the planet and bitcoin superpower of the world". Trump effusively praised the assembled industry leaders as "geniuses", even though in 2021 he called bitcoin a "scam".

To the crowd's delight, Trump pledged to fire the Securities and Exchange Commission chair, Gary Gensler, who has earned a reputation as a tough regulator by cracking down on some cryptocurrency frauds, and "appoint an SEC chair who will build the future, not block the future".

The wealthy crypto leaders who have ponied up to help Trump include th billionaire twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who each have donated $250,000 to America Pac, and more than $700,000 together to the pro Trump Make America Great Again Pac.

In a crypto twist that revealed family ties to the industry, Trump hosted a virtual briefing on X in mid-September with his sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump to announce a new cryptocurrency venture dubbed World Liberty Financial, which they helped launch along with Trump friend Steve Witkoff and "two little-known crypto entrepreneurs with no experience in running a high-profile business", according to the New York Times.

Trump said on X that "crypto is one of those things we have to do. Whether we like it or not, I have to do it." Although Trump and his family reportedly won't own or manage World Liberty they may receive some compensation, and a white paper for the venture calls Trump its "chief crypto advocate".

"The last thing we need is a candidate for president of the United States or his family going into the crypto business," said Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W Bush.

Painter warned broadly: "Crypto is one ideal vehicle for money laundering and paying bribes."

Related concerns about crypto arose in September when the FBI in an annual report disclosed that fraud related to crypto businesses soared in 2023 with Americans suffering $5.6bn in losses, a 45% jump from the prior year.

Election experts warn of other dangers in Trump's moves to lure big checks from donors in tandem with promising various government help to benefit their bottom lines.

"A somewhat unique hallmark of Donald Trump's political brand is how closely it's intertwined with his business identity," said Daniel Weiner, director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.

Weiner cautioned that while some of the funding support from tech leaders probably reflects "genuine affinity", he stressed: "These donors have a tremendous amount of business before the federal government – not just regulation but also a stake in hundreds of billions of dollars in government contracts."

Likewise, Ghosh warned that Trump's "approach to both campaigning and governing is fundamentally at odds with transparency, accountability and responsiveness to the public's interests".