Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election, was recently found liable for sexual assault, and has been charged with 88 felonies. Trump is currently spending four days a week at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse. And yet, there are still a lot of rich people who choose to spend massive sums of money to help Trump become the next president.
Trump's biggest supporters are directing their largess to a newly-formed joint fundraising committee called Trump 47. The new committee can accept donations in excess of $800,000. The first $6,600 goes to Trump's campaign, the next $5,000 goes to Trump's Save America PAC (which has been paying Trump's legal bills), the next $413,000 goes to the Republican National Committee, and the remaining amount is distributed to the local Republican Party in 39 states. The state Republican Parties often send the money right back to the national party, sometimes on the same day. Almost all of the money will be used to benefit Trump. (Biden uses a similar joint fundraising vehicle, the Biden Victory Fund, to facilitate large donations.)
On Monday, the Trump 47 committee filed its first report with the FEC. The filing revealed 20 people have donated $800,000 or more. Popular Information profiled nine of the most notable donors.
Jose "Pepe" Fanjul: $814,600
Jose Fanjul and his family own a sugar harvesting and refining empire, including a majority stake in Domino Sugar. Since the 1980s, the sugar industry has enjoyed billions of dollars in annual subsidies from the federal government, which guarantees high prices for domestic sugar. This makes sugar farming much more profitable than other kinds of farming and forces American consumers to spend twice as much for sugar compared to other countries. Fanjul is a prolific donor to Republican causes to preserve these subsidies. His brother, known as Alfy, focuses on influencing Democrats.
In November 2022, a subsidiary owned by the Fanjul brothers in the Dominican Republic, Central Roma, was banned from importing sugar after the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) found evidence of "the use of forced labor in its operations." In its investigation of Central Roma, the CBP found indications that the company engages in "abuse of vulnerability, isolation, withholding of wages, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime." Federal law prohibits the importation of goods produced by forced labor. Central Roma said it "disagree[d] vehemently with the decision" and hopes "to work collaboratively with CBP to resolve this matter."
Jose Fanjul employed Chloe Hardin Black, "a long-time white nationalist and the wife of a notorious former Klan leader," as an "executive assistant." Black was married to "Don Black, a former Alabama Klan chieftain who is famous among white supremacists for his creation of Stormfront, the largest white supremacist Web forum in the world." Before that, she was married to neo-Nazi and former KKK grand wizard David Duke. (Fanjul's wife even used Black as a public relations contact for a charter school seeking to help "impoverished migrant workers and their families.") After Black's white nationalist connections received substantial attention in the national media, a spokesperson for Fanjul told the New York Post that Black "remains presently employed by the company, and that is all we're going to say."
Steve Wynn: $806,300
Steve Wynn is a billionaire casino mogul based in Las Vegas. A one-time business rival, Wynn became a close political ally of Trump. After his 2016 victory, Trump installed Wynn as the finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, a powerful position responsible for assembling Trump's reelection war chest.
Wynn was forced to step down from the position after the Wall Street Journal published an expose detailing allegations of sexual misconduct. The paper spoke to dozens of people who described the misconduct, which took place over decades and involved "pressuring employees to perform sex acts." Wynn denied the allegations but also stepped down as chairman and CEO of his company, Wynn Resorts, because of “an avalanche of negative publicity..”
In 2022, Wynn was sued by the Department of Justice for lobbying Trump "on behalf of senior Chinese government officials" without registering as an agent of a foreign government. Wynn, over dinner and through phone calls, allegedly tried to convince Trump to deny a visa to a Chinese dissident. According to the lawsuit, Wynn "was motivated to protect his business interests in China," which included "casinos in the Chinese territory of Macau." The suit was dismissed by a federal judge, who argued that it was moot since Wynn had now stopped lobbying on behalf of the Chinese. The federal government appealed the ruling, and that appeal is still pending.
Geoffrey Palmer: $814,600
Real estate tycoon Geoffrey Palmer is a staunch opponent of affordable housing. He views affordable housing requirements as "immoral" and "not American.” In 2009, Palmer sued the city of Los Angeles over its affordable housing policies and won. The decision “effectively prohibited local governments from requiring owners to offer units at lower rents.” In recent years, Palmer has spent over $4 million defeating ballot initiatives that would allow local governments to reinstate rent control.
Hedge Clippers, a watchdog group, has criticized Palmer for his predatory practices. According to a report, over the years, the LA-based developer has “invested in cheap land and built high-priced luxury apartment buildings in major cities while fighting affordable-housing requirements, forcing rental prices to climb and displacing longtime residents in the process.” He is currently the biggest residential builder in Los Angeles.
In 2021, at the height of the pandemic, Palmer sued Los Angeles over its COVID-19 eviction moratorium. More recently, in 2022, Palmer agreed to pay $12.5 million in a class-action lawsuit that accused Palmer’s company of withholding security deposits from more than 19,000 renters. Palmer has also said that he only works in real estate because “Quite simply, I don’t like paying taxes!” He boasted in 2015 that his firm “hadn’t paid federal taxes for 30 years.”
Woody and Suzanne Johnson: $1,612,600
Woody Johnson amassed his wealth as an heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical and consumer-goods fortune. He is also the owner of the New York Jets. In the early 2000s, Johnson was involved in a tax avoidance scheme where he purchased, for a small fee, "$2 billion in capital losses" and used them "to erase taxable gains they garnered from stock sales." The machinations allowed Johnson to avoid about $300 million in federal taxes. Johnson claimed this was all legal, but when the IRS challenged that view, he "agreed to pay 100 percent of the tax due plus interest."
In 2017, Trump nominated Johnson to become ambassador to the United Kingdom. In that role, "Trump had asked him to see whether the British government could help get the British Open played at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland." Johnson then "raised the issue with the British official responsible for Scotland during a meeting in 2018." He did so even after being told by colleagues that making the request was unethical and that the British government had no role in determining the site of the British Open.
A 2020 report by the State Department Inspector General determined that, as ambassador, Johnson "made inappropriate comments on race, religion or gender to embassy staff and the State Department should investigate whether he violated laws barring discrimination."
Robert Bigelow: $824,600
Billionaire Robert Bigelow is notorious for pouring millions into UFO research. He believes that aliens exist on earth and once said on 60 Minutes that he’s had “close encounters” with UFOs and aliens. In 2017, a Times investigation found that Bigelow Aerospace – the billionaire’s space technology company – was the largest recipient of funds allocated for a shadowy Pentagon program investigating UFOs. The $22 million program was created at the request of former Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), a “longtime” friend of Bigelow who credits the hotel mogul for his interest in UFOs.
Bigelow is also the owner of Budget Suites of America, an extended-stay apartment chain. At the onset of the pandemic, Budget Suites of America filed 144 evictions, ignoring the eviction moratorium. Bigelow called the federal ban on evictions “legalized theft.” In 2022, he said that “liberalism” is a “cancer.”
But the hotel mogul wasn’t always Team Trump. Early in the Republican primaries, Bigelow put his vast fortune behind DeSantis, who he suggested would have a better chance than Trump of beating Biden. “Were he [Trump] to actually be the Republican candidate, that would be a travesty,” the billionaire said in an April 2023 interview with TIME. At the time, Bigelow also claimed that he stopped supporting Trump following the January 6 attack, saying that “Trump lost his north.”
The billionaire has also previously taken aim at Trump’s legal troubles. “We don’t expect Jesus Christ to be on the ballot,” Bigelow said. “But we also don’t expect somebody who is plagued by all kinds of criminal charges and civil charges against him all the time that he is going to be running for election. That just isn’t smart.”
Roger Norman: $824,600
Roger Norman, a reclusive billionaire from Nevada, was not always one to wade into national politics. But that changed when Norman’s Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center – the largest industrial center in the world and home to Google, Microsoft, and Tesla – qualified for a Trump administration tax break after a successful lobbying campaign by Nevada Republicans. Lance Gilman, who played a key role supporting the lobbying effort, previously said that Trump’s deregulation plan was “the untold story of the administration.” He added that it was “a bigger victory than Trump placing a new justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Following Trump’s presidency, Norman’s political contributions increased “at least tenfold since 2015,” ProPublica reports. Norman’s son, who goes by the same name and works with his father, “gave more than $2 million to support Trump’s reelection, compared to the less than $100,000 in total political contributions he’d made in the past.”
Joe and Marlene Ricketts: $1.6 million
The Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs, is one of the biggest Republican megadonor families. Joe Ricketts – the founder of TD Ameritrade – has spent years championing conservative causes. In 2019, Ricketts was forced to apologize after emails leaked in which he wrote that “we cannot ever let Islam become a large part of our society” and that “Muslims are naturally my (our) enemy.” The emails also “contained conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama.” In 2012, Ricketts commissioned a $10 million proposal to run commercials linking former President Obama to his controversial former pastor.
Joe Ricketts is also an outspoken critic of government spending and previously launched an organization in 2010 tracking earmarks requested by lawmakers. But since acquiring the Cubs the Ricketts “have actively sought to use taxpayer money to expand their own business operations,” Mother Jones reported.
In 2016, Joe and Marlene Ricketts “donated $5.5 million to a super PAC devoted to stopping Trump from winning the Republican nomination.” But the couple changed course when Trump secured the nomination, eventually going on to become some of his biggest donors. The couple’s son, Todd Ricketts, was tapped by Trump to serve as his deputy commerce secretary. Todd withdrew his nomination but in 2018 Trump helped Todd become the Finance Chair of the RNC. Their other son, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE), is also a Trump supporter.
