Trump inauguration spending 'under criminal investigation' after materials seized in Cohen case

Federal prosecutors have reportedly launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s inauguration spending to determine whether funds were misspent and major donors were offered access to the new administration in exchange for money.

The president’s inaugural spending was shrouded in controversy when millions of dollars allegedly were not properly accounted for, potentially violating federal laws as the organisation behind the inauguration festivities was a registered nonprofit.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “The investigation partly arises out of materials seized in the federal probe of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s business dealings, according to people familiar with the matter.”

However, an attorney close to the matter told the paper, “We are not aware of any evidence the investigation the Journal is reporting actually exists.”

The president's inaugural committee pushed back hard last summer on questions about whether the unprecedented $107 million budget for the event was fraught with cost overruns and misspending. A top inauguration official assured media outlets at the time that spending had been restrained and monitored.

That official — Rick Gates — acknowledged in court earlier this year he personally may have pocketed some of the inaugural committee’s money, however.

Gates, the government’s star witness in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s financial fraud trial, admitted to Manafort’s lawyers that he “possibly” wrongfully submitted personal expenses to the inaugural committee for reimbursement.

Though only a footnote to Gates’ disclosure of tax fraud, extramarital affairs and embezzlement from Manafort, the admission raised new questions about how well the inaugural committee tracked its own spending and why Gates was chosen for a top inauguration job in the first place.

The Journal reported federal agents seized a recorded conversation Cohen had with a former adviser to Melania Trump named Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who also worked to plan the inaugural event. Ms Wolkoff suggested she was concerned about the inaugural committee’s spending habits, the paper reported Thursday. It wasn’t immediately clear when the conversation took place.

The committee only identified what vendors received $61m of its $103 total cost to pout on the inaugural event — an unusually large figure for a smaller inauguration like Mr Trump’s 2016 event. The remaining $42m has not been publicly accounted for.

According to a committee source and a vendor who had access to the inaugural committee’s early planning documents, the committee’s initial plans were modeled on President Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration — an event that cost just over $40 million.

How Mr Trump’s inaugural committee’s costs rose to $100 million — despite throwing fewer events than Mr Obama’s team, and hosting them in largely the same venues — is difficult to explain, even taking into account the $700,000 organisers spent on entertainment and the $1 million lawn coverings that Mr Trump later blamed for making his crowd look small.

Reporting contributed by AP