They're writing big campaign checks to Republicans - but mostly not to Trump
The latest round of campaign disclosure forms show that high-dollar Republican donors continue to write large checks, but they're not going to Donald Trump.
An analysis by The Washington Post shows that the vast majority of those multi-zero campaign contributions are going to super PACs in a concerted effort to win back the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms. The biggest beneficiaries look to be the Senate Leadership Fund and the Congressional Leadership Fund.
The Washington Post reports that billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and chief executive of Blackstone, gave $10 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the flagship super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates. He also gave another $10 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is the super PAC supporting Republican House candidates.
Other top donors include hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin ($5 million) and Rupert Murdoch ($2 million). The co-founder of Home Depot co-founder, Ken Langone, early Home Depot investor Walter Buckley Jr., hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and petroleum giant Chevron each gave $1 million.
Top donors to the Congressional Leadership Fund include Griffin, who ponied up $7.5 million, investor Charles Schwab ($1.5 million) and Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus ($1.2 million).
To be sure, Trump still attracts some large donations and has twice as much cash in the bank as the Republican National Committee. Filings indicate that some of his biggest contributors in the first three months of 2022 have been Caryn Borland, a QAnon conspiracy theory supporter, and Anthony Lomangino, who ran ran garbage collection businesses, each of whom gave $250,000 to Trump's Make America Great Again, Again! super PAC. Likewise, a company connected to Texas road construction executive Doug Pitcock contributed a quarter-million dollars.