Donald Trump hiked rent for his own campaign office once donor money became available

Donald Trump prides himself on running a minimalist, even austere, presidential campaign. The dozens of advisers, pollsters, image experts and fashion gurus that so bloat and expand the pay-rolls of most traditional operations are not for him.

But there is one area where he appears to be more willing to shell out and that’s the amount he pays himself to rent office space in Trump Tower.

Reports by the Federal Election Commission show that the Republican presidential nominee campaign paid $35,457 (£26,897) per month for rent and utilities to Trump Tower Commercial LLC between August 2015 and April this year.

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However, the payments began increasing in May and hit $169,758 last month. The rent for the New York property jumped even though he was paying fewer staff in July than he was in March.

Mr Trump became the de facto Republican candidate in May after he won the Indiana primary, and senator Ted Cruz and John Kasich suspended their campaigns.

He formally accepted the nomination at the party’s convention last month and said he would begin accepting donations to his campaign. Previously, he had boasted that he was paying for everything out of his own finances.

The campaign did not immediately respond to enquiries from The Independent. However, in a statement to The Huffington Post, it said that it had expanded into larger quarters.

“Mr Trump makes a personal contribution of $2m per month to the campaign, obviously a much higher amount than rent,” the statement said.

It did not, however, address the question of why the campaign needed more space when it had a lower number of staff.

In 2000, when Mr Trump was considering running as an independent candidate, he said: “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”

Mr Trump has long been accused of paying himself and members of his own family during the campaign. In June, The New York Times revealed that the Trump campaign, which had just $1.3m to hand in June, paid at least $1.1m to his businesses and family members in May for expenses associated with events and travel costs. The total represented nearly a fifth of the $6m that his campaign spent in the month.

“He could end up turning a profit if he repaid himself for the campaign loans,” said Paul Ryan, a campaign finance expert with the Campaign Legal Centre. “He could get all his money back plus the profit margin for what his campaign has paid himself for goods and services.”

Mr Trump flies to campaign events on his personal Boeing 757 airliner, which he has nick-named "Trump Force One". The Huffington Post said the plane, which is aging, gets through up to $10,000 in fuel every hour. It said, that as a result of this, air travel has been one of the biggest expense categories for his campaign. In July 2016, $495,000 went to Mr Trump’s company that owns it.

Yet not everything about the campaign has been a financial boost for the candidate. Earlier this month it was reported that Trump-branded businesses had seen a dip of at least 10 per cent in visitors since he ran for president.