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- El Paso City Council voted on Monday to hire legal counsel to help raise the more than half a million dollars owed to the city by the Trump campaign at a rally nearly two years ago, local station KTSM reported.
- The city reportedly spent around $ 470,000 on security and other expenses for the February 2019 rally. The additional debt is a one-time late payment fee of around $ 99,000.
- The city council vote came days after it announced the deployment of National Guard personnel to the city in West Texas to help tackle morgue overflow as it battles the latest wave of cases of COVID-19.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
The city of El Paso hired an attorney to help raise more than half a million dollars owed to the city by the Trump campaign at a rally nearly two years ago, the station reported. local KTSM.
City council voted unanimously on Monday to hire outside lawyers to help collect the nearly $ 570,000 in debt the city has been trying to collect since February 2019.
A Trump campaign rally was held that month at the El Paso County Coliseum. The city spent about $ 470,000 on security and other expenses, according to the Texas Tribune. The additional debt is a one-time late payment charge of approximately $ 99,000, or 21%.
The city council vote came days after the announcement of National Guard personnel deploying to the city in West Texas to help tackle morgue overflow as it battles the latest wave of cases of COVID-19.
Earlier this month, El Paso Mayor Dee Margo told Business Insider’s Charles Davis that the city needed federal funding to help fight the spread of the virus and protect the local economy. .
“We all see firsthand the struggles that families in El Paso have every day, in addition to the challenges that we have in our own budget,” said Peter Svarzbein, city council member, according to KTSM.
“This amount of money is therefore not without consequences and the message that we send that no one is above the law is also an important message for our community to understand,” he added.
The Tribune also reported that the city had considered continuing the campaign earlier this year for the money owed.
“We are in unprecedented territory having to collect an unpaid bill from a sitting president,” the city’s lawyer, Karla Nieman, reportedly told the Tribune.
The city said the decision to hire an outside lawyer would not be up to taxpayers, as Snapper L. Carr’s law firm only needs to be paid if the debt is successfully collected.
The Trump campaign did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
It is not clear how much debt the Trump campaign has. Donations solicited this month to purportedly pay for President Donald Trump’s legal challenges to the election were actually going to be used primarily to pay off election debt, according to the fine print on the donations page.
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