Alleged Donations By David Trott, His Wife And His Children Raise Ethics Questions

The other day, an avid reader of my blog sent me a copy of financial terrorist and foreclosure mill operator David Trott’s campaign finance report for his congressional campaign in Michigan. This reader wanted to show me some type of clandestine connection between Trott and GOP Senate Candidate Terri Lynn Land.  I had to explain that connections like this are not unusual nor are they illegal.

However, if you dig deeper into Trott’s FEC filings there are other issues that raise serious red flags that could conceivably get both David and Kappy Trott prosecuted and disbarred as attorneys.

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” – Abraham Lincoln

It’s common knowledge that Trott ponied up nearly $800,000 of his own money to help jump-start his campaign. However, what appears to have slipped through the cracks with Detroit media are the “donations” made by his wife Kappy, their college-aged children, Taylor and Courtney and his son, David, Jr., a volunteer teacher with AmeriCorp.

In September as Trott announced his candidacy, the Trott family rallied around the Trott family lawn jockey on the front lawn of Trott’s home in the posh Detroit suburb of Birmingham. It appears they all wrote campaign checks to Trott’s congressional campaign totaling $20,800.

This is where the red flags go up. David Trott’s son, who states his profession as “Student” on Federal Elections Commission campaign finance disclosures, allegedly made two campaign contributions to Trott’s campaign of $2600 each on 9/27/2013. On 9/30/2013, Trott’s daughter, Courtney also a “student”  allegedly made two contributions of $2600 each to her father’s campaign dated 3 days later.

Trott’s other son, David Trott, Jr., a teacher who get paid $100 month plus living expenses as a teacher through AmeriCorps (a government program David, Sr. wants eliminated) also allegedly ponied up two contributions of $2600 each on 9/27/2013 to help out his father.

So here is where the first set of red flags go up. How can an AmeriCorp teacher making $1200 a year afford to contribute $5,200 to a congressional campaign? Or better yet, how many college kids out there have $5200 laying around? Yep, it’s pretty obvious that Poppa Trott gave them the money to kick into his campaign. Federal election laws prohibit individuals from making contributions in another person’s name.

Another red flag is Trott’s wife Kappy who also allegedly kicked in $5200 with two donations of $2,600 (one on 8/23/2013 and the other on 9/27/2013). Kappy Trott who is a lawyer (License #P58610) with her husband’s firm, Trott & Trott and oversees his title companies stated her profession on the finance disclosure as “homemaker”. She is also currently employed by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office thanks to her husband’s hefty campaign contributions to current Michigan AG Bill Schuette and former AG Mike Cox.

According to the Federal Elections Commission, the maximum contribution an individual can give to a congressional race is $2600.00. So not only did Kappy and the kids violate federal election laws by giving $5200 apiece to Poppa Trott in the same cycle, They knowingly did it in $2600.00 donations so that it would not be noticed by Detroit media and would bypass the safeguards on the FEC electronic filing system.

Doing these types of shenanigans may seem harmless to the average person on the street but it is highly illegal. Trott and his wife could be prosecuted by the feds and even disbarred.

Don’t believe me? Ask Geoffrey Fieger, the late Jack Kevorkian’s attorney.

In 2007, the Bush Administration indicted Fieger for questionable contributions made by members of his firm to the presidential campaign of John Edwards and essentially doing something similar that Trott did. Although Fieger was later acquitted, he and his partner, Ven Johnson later agreed to pay a fine of $133,000 to the Justice Department to end the litigation.