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The Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and KPNX-TV's Brahm Resnik join Meet the Press NOW as nearly a dozen Trump allies were arraigned in Arizona on charges related to their alleged involvement in a plan to overturn the state's 2020 election results.
New campaign finance records show that Donald Trump's political action committee paid the legal firm representing the former president's longtime adviser Boris Epshteyn ahead of his pending criminal trial in Arizona.
The leadership PAC, Save America, made two payments of $40,000 and $10,000 on May 14 to the Phoenix-based law firm of Tully Bailey LLP. Named partner Michael Bailey, who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona between 2019 and 2021, has represented Epshteyn in the Arizona case since at least May 9, according to court records. Epshteyn was among those indicted in April on state charges that he helped orchestrate the alleged fake elector scheme in Arizona to send electors for Trump to the U.S. Capitol to be counted instead of Joe Biden’s electors after the 2020 election. He has pleaded not guilty. Bailey, who did not respond to NBC News’ multiple requests for comment, represented Epshteyn at his June 18 arraignment, which was delayed, by permission of the court and with prosecutors’ consent, due to Bailey’s own obligations to another client outside the state. It is not clear if the payment to the firm was directly tied to representation for Epshteyn, but the payments were the PAC’s first disbursements to it. Since 2023, none of the other 30 co-defendants with ties to Trump in Arizona or a related scheme in Georgia appear to have directly received financial support from Save America for their legal expenses. Epshteyn remains a frequent presence on the campaign trail for Trump. He has led the coordination of Trump’s multiple legal teams that have provided counsel for the former president related to his New York hush money trial and three other pending criminal cases, as well as the investigation by the now-defunct Jan. 6 committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. Save America, which Trump established in November 2020, and his 2024 presidential campaign have spent at least $90.6 million covering legal-related expenses primarily on behalf of the former president. Filings with the Federal Election Commission dating back to 2021 show that nearly $83 million of that amount is attributable to Save America. The PAC has made payments for “legal consulting” to law firms representing Trump’s co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. The entity’s filings, however, do not reflect any disbursements to those firms since the end of 2023, nor are any Trump-affiliated political entities believed to have paid lawyers representing defendants beyond Trump himself and Epshteyn in either Arizona or Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ election interference case against Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants is largely stalled pending an appeal concerning her ongoing involvement in the matter. When asked if Save America has covered legal expenses for any other co-defendants in Georgia or Arizona, the organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, also did not respond. In December 2022, Save America made a payment of nearly $900,000 to McGuireWoods LLP, which has represented former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows both in the Jan. 6 congressional investigation and other, ongoing matters. In 2021 and 2022, as the Jan. 6 committee sent subpoenas to a web of individuals close to Trump during the weeks around the Capitol attack, Save America paid roughly $175,000 to the law firm of attorney Stanley Woodward. Woodward represented a litany of Trump's personal aides during the inquiry, including Nauta, Will Russell and Dan Scavino. He has also represented Nauta in the Mar-a-Lago documents case since the investigative phase of the case.
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