Donald Trump’s campaign has hired Taylor Budowich, a former Trump aide who has been running the super PAC MAGA Inc.
Budowich was a spokesperson for the Trump 2020 campaign, and has found himself embroiled in Trump’s classified documents case and implicated by Congress’s January 6 investigation.
In June of last year, he testified before a federal grand jury in Trump’s classified documents case. “America has become a sick and broken nation—a decline led by Joe Biden and power hungry Democrats,” he said at the time, per CBS . “I will not be intimidated by this weaponization of government. For me, the need to unite our nation and make America great again has never been more clear than it is today.”
Budowich was subpoenaed in 2021 by the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6, which claimed it had reason to believe he had directed roughly $200,000 from undisclosed sources to fund an ad campaign encouraging people to attend the rally that would transform into the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
When JPMorganChase Bank complied with Congress’s request, turning over Budowich’s financial records, he filed a complaint and restraining order against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House Select Committee and its members, and his bank. His complaint was dismissed by a district court judge, and when he filed to appeal that decision, the case was dismissed again by an appeals court in March 2023—three months after the January 6 committee shuttered its 18-month investigation.
MAGA Inc. is a pro-Trump super PAC that plans to launch a series of ads in swing states that paint Vice President Kamala Harris as a “lunatic,” according to a memo from the group. MAGA Inc. has previously been used to financially buoy the former president’s campaign as Trump hemorrhaged funds across his legal battles, reportedly sending more than $50 million to Save America, Trump’s leadership PAC, in just the first quarter of 2024.
Budowich’s rehiring is the latest in a series of plays by the Trump campaign that signal panic in the former president’s team, which has spent the last month scrambling to mount a solid opposition to Vice President Kamala Harris’s new campaign.
One after another, each of the Trump team’s attempts to regain its footing has proved more disastrous than the last, from Trump’s appearance at the NABJ conference, which devolved into racist accusations ; to his rally in Atlanta, where he criticized a Republican governor who’d said he’d vote for him; to his slate of shockingly unfocused political ads and his trainwreck conversation with Elon Musk Monday.
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