But we’re supposed to be reality-based around here.
BBB has a diary at the top of the wreck list that completely misunderstands the Trump campaign’s latest FEC filing. It’s understandable, because the FEC requires things to be reported in a really screwy way. Basically, if someone (say, the candidate) makes a contribution which never touches the campaign’s bank account, this gets reported in both the contributions and disbursements detail schedules. In the latter, the line item is followed by one or more “memo” lines which detail where the money went.
This same misunderstanding happened with regard to the Clinton campaign last year. On this page of her July 2015 quarterly there are a number of what appear to be disbursements to her, but which in fact were contributions from her.
I’d love it if we had caught Trump paying himself a salary from campaign funds, but we haven’t. Here’s what I think happened:
1) The campaign is short of cash to pay employees, so Trump writes a check for the total for the week. This gets reported as “In Kind: Payroll (see memos below)”
2) The check is deposited to “Trump Payroll Corp”. This is reported in the first “memo” line.
3) “Trump Payroll Corp” cuts checks to each employee. This is reported in the subsequent “memo” lines.