WASHINGTON – The political action committee (PAC) that former president Donald Trump is using to pay his legal bills faced such staggering costs in 2023 that it requested a refund on a US$60 million (S$80 million) contribution it made to another group supporting the Republican front runner, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The decision signals a potential money crisis for Trump, who has so far refused to pay his own voluminous bills directly and has also avoided creating a legal defence fund for himself and people who have become entangled in the various investigations related to him.

It comes as Trump runs a campaign while under indictment in two jurisdictions and soon potentially a third, while also paying the legal fees of a number of witnesses who are close to him or who work for him.

It is unclear how much money was refunded.

But the refund was sought as the PAC, called Save America, spent more than US$40 million in legal fees incurred by Trump and witnesses in various legal cases related to him in this year alone, according to another person familiar with the matter.

The numbers will be part of the Save America Federal Election Commission filing that is expected to be made public late on Monday.

This US$40 million was in addition to the US$16 million that Save America spent in the previous two years on legal fees. Since then, Trump has been indicted twice and has expanded the size of his legal team, and his two co-defendants in the case related to his retention of classified material work for him. The total legal spending is roughly US$56 million.

The US$40 million figure was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

The PAC was the entity in which Trump had parked the more than US$100 million raised when he sought small-dollar donations after losing the 2020 election. Trump claimed he needed the support to fight widespread fraud in the race. Officials, including some with his campaign, turned up no evidence of widespread fraud.

Trump used some of that US$100 million for other politicians and political activities in 2022, but he also used it to pay more than US$16 million in legal fees, most of them related to investigations into his doings, and at least US$10 million of which was for his own personal fees.

Save America began 2023 with just US$18 million in cash on hand, which is less than half of what was spent on legal bills this year.

Campaign finance experts are divided on whether Trump is even able to continue to use the PAC to pay his personal legal bills, as he became a candidate last November.

Trump has long told associates that lawyers and other people contracted to work for him should do so for free, because they get free publicity. He has told several associates that legal defence funds are organised only by those who are guilty of crimes, according to people who have heard the remarks.

Earlier this year, Trump began diverting a larger percentage of every dollar he raised online away from his campaign and into his PAC, which he has used to pay for his lawyers. At the start of the 2024 campaign, Trump devoted 99 US cents of every dollar raised online to his campaign, but he shifted that formula to now give only 90 US cents to the campaign and 10 US cents to the PAC, which has served as a sort of de facto legal fund.

The move drew sharp criticism from some of his rivals. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie called it “disgraceful” on CNN during an interview in June.

“He’s going to middle-class men and women in this country and they’re donating US$15, US$25, US$50, US$100 because they believe in Donald Trump and they want him to be president again,” Mr Christie said. “They’re not giving that money so he can pay his personal legal fees.”

Yet that increased amount diverted from Trump’s campaign could not possibly begin to cover the high costs of legal fees that the candidate and his associates have incurred.

A spokesman for Trump’s campaign, Mr Steven Cheung, would not comment on the refund request. But regarding the overall spending on lawyers, he said that “the weaponised Department of Justice has continued to go after innocent Americans” because they worked for Trump and it knows it has no legitimate case.

He characterised the legal actions against Trump and his allies as “heinous actions by Joe Biden’s cronies” and said the PAC had contributed to covering legal costs to “protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed”.

Despite having his PAC pay his legal fees, Trump, a wealthy businessman and celebrity, insisted on Saturday at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, that he would spend his own money on his campaign if he had to. NYTIMES