Donald Trump Chased Over Unpaid Debts for His Rallies

Authorities in Erie, Pennsylvania, are still seeking $40,330 from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to pay for assistance they provided for his 2018 and 2023 campaign visits, bringing the total debt five cities say he owes them to over $740,000.
The Erie claim was made by a spokesman for the city’s Democratic Mayor Joe Schember during a conversation with the Erie Times-News newspaper.
It is in addition to more than $700,000 of unpaid debts that four cities—El Paso, Texas; Spokane, Washington; Mesa, Arizona; and Green Bay, Wisconsin—were still seeking last month for rallies that took place between 2016 and 2019, a Newsweek investigation found.
Erie is also calculating a currently undisclosed figure related to the rally Trump held at the city’s Bayfront Convention Center on Sunday, which could push the total unpaid debt figure beyond $740,330.
A 2019 report from the Center for Public Integrity found 10 city authorities, including Erie and the four outlined above, were demanding a total of $841,219 as back payments for historic Trump rallies they helped stage.
Newsweek contacted representatives of Erie Mayor Joe Schember and Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential election campaign via email for comment on Tuesday outside of regular office hours.
On Sunday Trump held a rally at Erie’s 4,000-capacity Bayfront Convention Center, during which he claimed law enforcement need “one really violent day” to crack down on crime, sparking comparisons online to The Purge film franchise.
Rob Lee, a spokesman for Mayor Schember, told the Erie Times-News: “The Trump campaign still owes the City of Erie a total of $40,330 for public safety costs associated with campaign visits in 2018 and 2023. These costs were for police, fire and public works personnel overtime.”
According to the Erie Times-News the bill was split between $35,130 spent supporting a midterm election rally held by the then president in 2018 at the Erie Insurance Arena, along with a second rally Trump held at the same venue in 2023.
Renee Lamis, Schember’s chief-of-staff, said the city would also be seeking payment from the Trump campaign to cover its expenditure on Sunday’s Bayfront Convention Center rally, although it was still calculating this figure.
During Sunday’s rally Trump said the Biden administration had blocked him from holding an outdoors rally in Wisconsin the previous day, with the venue changed to an arts center in Prairie du Chien with a restricted capacity.
He said: “We were in Wisconsin yesterday, and except for the fact that the administration would not let us have—we had 50,000, maybe more people—and we were going to do an outdoor rally, and we ended up having to do it inside, in front of about a thousand people.”
An unnamed figure from the Secret Service, which makes threat assessments independently from the Biden administration, told CBS News and Axios the agency was “never configured to provide such an elevated level of protection for an increasing number of protected.”
They said: “Our personnel and equipment are being pushed to their limits to sustain the current operational tempo.
“This proposed Wisconsin event also took place during the United Nations General Assembly, where the Secret Service is responsible for the safety and security of over 140 world leaders amid a challenged global threat level.”
Trump narrowly survived an assassination bid on July 13 when a man opened fire at a rally he was hosting in Butler, Pennsylvania. The attack killed one attendee and left the Republican presidential contender bleeding from one ear before the gunman, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead by law enforcement.