On Tuesday, NBC News correspondent Ali Vitali, stationed outside Fulton County’s Rice Street jail in Georgia, came face-to-face with one of America’s most infamous lawyers and asked him a question most attorneys neither expect nor hope to get: Who is paying for your lawyers?
And in response, John Eastman, a constitutional law scholar and volunteer lawyer for former President Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, responded simply that he alone is paying his fees before refusing to comment on other issues.
It’s well understood that money makes people do strange things. But in the criminal defense world, lack of money does the same.
Their exchange — while brief — is nonetheless significant because like Eastman, many other former lawyers for Trump, most of whom were never paid for their services in the first place, also now find themselves under investigation, if not indictment. And many of them appear to be without anyone to assume the cost of the lawyers they’ve personally had to retain.
A search of the Federal Election Commission’s database, which reflects spending through June 30 of this year, seems to confirm this. I looked to see whether any of the major Trump-affiliated/controlled campaign committees — Save America, his leadership PAC; Make America Great Again Inc., the primary Trump-affiliated super PAC; Donald J. Trump for President 2024, his official presidential campaign committee; and the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee — has paid for the legal expenses of his most prominent former lawyers-turned-co-defendants and/or unindicted co-conspirators. What I found surprised me.
According to that database, while campaign committees associated with Trump have spent tens of millions of dollars on Trump’s own legal expenses, at no point has any of those four committees paid the law firms known to represent Eastman, former Trump Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, former Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani or Jenna Ellis, or Eastman’s fellow constitutional law expert and volunteer lawyer Kenneth Chesebro. At best, one of those committees paid $340,000 to a vendor Giuliani retained in connection with Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss’ ongoing civil defamation lawsuit against him.
Moreover, according to new reporting by CNBC, a new legal defense fund established by two Trump allies to assist aides and employees with their legal expenses has not raised any funds, much less distributed them.
Asked by NBC News about Trump’s payment, or lack thereof, for his ex-lawyers’ legal expenses, the Trump campaign had no comment.
But overall, Trump — whose musical favorites notoriously include the Village People’s “YMCA” and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera — now seems to be singing along with the Taylor Swift catalog: “You’re on your own, kid. You always have been.”
That’s why Ellis, for instance, has opened a “crowdfunding support page” to help fund her legal defense. As of today, she’s raised more than $94,000, which is a lot of money, except when you’re under indictment.








