Trump nearly quintupled the rent for his Trump Tower campaign HQ when he started taking donors' money

Donald Trump almost quintupled the rent of his campaign headquarters in Trump Tower as soon as he was no longer self-funding his campaign, The Huffington Post reports. Federal Election Commission filings indicate that in March, the Trump campaign paid a rent of $35,458, but by July, when Trump was raising money from donors, he had jacked the rent up to $169,758.

Trump actually had fewer staff working for him from March to July, dropping from 197 paid employees to 172. "If I was a donor, I'd want answers. If they don't have any more staff, and they're paying five times more? That's the kind of stuff I'd read and try to make an [attack] ad out of it," a Trump-supporting Republican National Committee member told The Huffington Post under the condition of anonymity.

Trump has also made payments to his golf courses and restaurants totaling $260,000 since a mid-May deal to fundraise with the RNC; his large payments to his own institutions were reportedly less common when he was footing the bill:

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"Nobody cares when you're spending your own money, but when you’re spending the donor's $27, that could cause problems," the RNC member said.