[Opinion] ‘Might have to give those millions back’: Legal experts say Jack Smith could seize Trump's fundraising cash

Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s investigation appears to include the reportedly millions of dollars Donald Trump‘s PAC raised – and spent – after the 2020 election, with legal experts suggesting if the massive amounts of money raised were based off fraudulent claims, the federal government might “seize” those funds or require them to be returned.

“This isn’t over yet,” says NBC News national security analyst Frank Figliuzzi, a former top FBI official. “When you raise millions based on a fraudulent claim, you’ve committed a crime. And, you just might have to give those millions back.”

Figliuzzi’s remarks are based on a Tuesday report from Politico that reveals, “Special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of efforts by Donald Trump and others to subvert the 2020 election remains ongoing — with at least one interview this week that focused on fundraising and spending by Trump’s political action committee.”

Top Rudy Giuliani ally Bernard Kerik, the disgraced former NYPD Commissioner who was pardoned by Donald Trump in 2020, was interviewed by Jack Smith’s investigators in “a closed-door interview on Monday.”

Kerik was “asked multiple questions about the Save America PAC’s enormous fundraising haul in the weeks between Election Day and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to Kerik’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who was present for the interview and shared details with POLITICO.”

“It’s a laser focus from Election Day to Jan. 6,” Parlatore told Politico.

NYU Law School professor Andrew Weissmann, the well-known MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst and former FBI General Counsel, offered this advice:

“Keep your eyes peeled for a criminal case about the Trump PAC and forfeiture allegations/seizures. Case wd [would] not need to go all the way up to Trump before Jack charges folks and seizes assets.”

Professor of law Jennifer Taub responded with a bit of snark: “Wire fraud? Delicious.”

Last year in June NPR reported that, according to the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, “the Trump campaign took $250 million in donations from supporters that it said would go to an election defense fund to pay for legal fees to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. But the fund was never actually created, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., one of the committee members, said … in the panel’s second public hearing.”

“Instead, the money went to the Save America political action committee,” NPR reported.

And in September of last year, Vanity Fair reported, “Two of Trump’s former top aides, Stephen Miller and Brian Jack, were issued subpoenas this week,” in an article noting that a “federal grand jury is now looking into former President Donald Trump’s Save America PAC.”