From others in Rudy World I began hearing the number “$207 million.” The claim was that the Republican Party had raised $207 million to “stop the steal.” In one version it grew past $300 million. In one version of the staff rumor, the finger on the button for those millions was a high-level woman at the Republican National Committee. In another version, it was all jointly managed by that RNC woman and the Commish, and they were keeping an eye to the future.
In almost everyone’s version of the story, $100 million had been set aside for future legal defense. But whoever was in charge, they were sitting on all the money, and I can promise, I never saw one penny of it being spent in any way to “stop the steal.”
So whatever Republican loyalists around the country coughed up those hundreds of millions, in donations of $10 and $20…. They were all fleeced. It was a big joke: there was a pot of hundreds of millions of dollars given by Republican rank-and-file to Republican Bigshots to help reverse-engineer and unscramble whatever had happened on November 3, and not a penny was going to any activity related to doing so. It was all being held by people at the top licking their lips.
https://www.deepcapture.com/2021/01/november-3-december-23-all-the-presidents-teams/
There was fine print in donating to this. It was actually a lefty who pointed it out to me back in November or so; claimed Trump was cheating us all out of our money for his personal gain and we were falling for it. I never donated but did look to see what he was talking about. I can't personally remember the specific fine print on it, but here's an article that was written 11/11/20.
Most Trump donors giving to the “Stop the Steal” fund are having their money redirected to the GOP or his personal PAC:
"The “Stop the Steal” fund is only keeping amounts over $8,000, which are the vast minority of donations. Donations over that amount have the first $8,000 going to the GOP and the PAC. According to the fine print, the first $5,000 goes to the PAC and up to $3,600 would to the GOP. Donations to the so-called “recount account” is legally limited to $2,800 per person. The bottom line: most of the money donated to “Stop the Steal” won’t go to lawsuits or efforts to support a recount."
https://nationalzero.com/2020/11/11/most-trump-donors-giving-to-the-stop-the-steal-fund-are-having-their-money-redirected-to-the-gop-or-his-personal-pac/
So it appears now that the lefty was wrong in that it wasn't Trump personally who was taking our money for his own purposes. (I knew better than to believe that.) But he was right in that it wasn't going where most people assumed that it was.
This article explains it a little better, written 11/11/2020
"But any small-dollar donations from Trump’s grassroots donors won’t be going to legal expenses at all, according to a Reuters review of the legal language in the solicitations. A donor would have to give more than $8,000 before any money goes to the “recount account” established to finance election challenges, including recounts and lawsuits over alleged improprieties, the fundraising disclosures show. The fine print makes clear most of the money will go to other priorities.
A large portion of the money goes to “Save America,” a Trump leadership PAC, or political action committee, set up on Monday, and the Republican National Committee (RNC). Under Federal Election Commission rules, both groups have broad leeway in how they can use the funds."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-fundraising-insigh/donations-under-8k-to-trump-election-defense-instead-go-to-president-rnc-idUSKBN27R309