A charity is helping pay for legal fees for many of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants in various charges related to the Trump team’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a report by the Washington Post.
The Courage Under Fire Legal Defense Fund, a project of the nonprofit organization Personnel Policy Operations has been recommending advisers to a second Trump term and helping pay for the legal fees for people formerly involved with Trump who are facing multiple overlapping congressional, federal, and state investigations.
Those receiving money from this charity include John Eastman, a lawyer who advised Trump’s campaign to reject the electoral votes; Jeffrey Clark, a former Department of Justice official who looked to delegitimize the 2020 election results; Mike Roman, the former Trump campaign official who was responsible for coordinating the alternate, pro-Trump electors; and Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House adviser serving a four-month prison sentence for not complying with a congressional subpoena.
“I’m dealing with millions of dollars in legal fees,” Eastman said. “I suppose if I had a billionaire hanging out ready to help, that would be nice, but that’s not the world in which we live.”
He is being prosecuted in Arizona for fraud and forgery and was charged in Georgia as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s federal racketeering indictment. Eastman said those who could serve in a future Trump White House would need to be assured that they could not become entangled with charges like these.
“One of the things that people need to be concerned about in taking on a role in any administration is if they’re going to end up with a big target on their back,” he said. “Knowing that people will stand up to help defend you makes it easier for people to be willing to take on those roles.”
The charity has spent about $3.2 million so far with major support from Tim Dunn, a Texas oil billionaire. PPO’s legal budget is funded by a separate group: the Patriot Legal Defense Fund, which was formed to support Trump’s legal fees. The Georgia Republican Party is also covering legal fees for some defendants in Georgia.
PPO was born out of shake-ups in staff that occurred toward the end of Trump’s presidency. In tandem with covering legal expenses, it is vetting aides to staff a second Trump White House. The group is vetting people to see if they would be aligned with Trump’s MAGA ideology enough to serve in his White House.
It is being developed under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 collaboration. The Heritage database does not collect derogatory information about its candidates and now has more than 10,000 resumes on hand.
“You need negative information and blacklists, but I don’t think Heritage is the right place for it,” a person involved in the project told the Washington Post. “Someone does need to do it.”
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PPO and Project 2025 are in regular contact with Trump campaign advisers, although their work is unsanctioned, according to those familiar with the matter.
“Time is too short for an administration to waste on self-sabotage,” PPO President Troup Hemenway wrote in a recent op-ed. “Conservative organizations have now become laser-focused on the staffing challenge.”
