Want to have dinner with Donald Trump in KY? It will cost you at least $25,000

Presumptive GOP nominee and former president Donald Trump will make a stop in Lexington to fill his campaign coffers next month. Want to see him? It will cost you at least $25,000 per couple.

The May 15 dinner event will be hosted by Joe and Kelly Craft, GOP mega-donors based in Lexington, alongside Barbara Banke, the owner of Kendall-Jackson Wine in California’s Sonoma County and head of Central Kentucky’s Stonestreet Horse Farm.

According to fine print at the bottom of the invitation, all paying attendees will be funding an account that spent more than $50 million last year footing Trump’s various legal bills.

A donation of $100,000 per couple is required to co-host the event, which includes one “roundtable opportunity.” Host committee members who pay $250,000 per couple get two such roundtable opportunities and VIP seating; same goes for “chairs,” a designation that would cost $844,600 per couple.

Kelly Craft is the former Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to Canada and later to the United Nations during Trump’s presidency. Her husband, Joe, is a billionaire coal magnate and philanthropist. The Crafts have become nationally known GOP mega-donors in recent years, contributing heavily to all of Trump’s presidential efforts as well as other primary candidates.

Money raised at the event will sequentially go toward his own campaign, his Save America PAC (political action committee), the Republican National Committee, and most of the state Republican parties in the country.

According to campaign disclosures, Save America PAC spent more than $50 million in legal and investigation-related bills for Trump in 2023. Some of those cases have been related to Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election based on the falsehood that he beat President Joe Biden.

Per a disclosure at the bottom of the invitation, out of a maximum $844,600 donation, the first $6,600 will go to his campaign accounts, the next $5,000 to Save America PAC and then the next $413,000 — the largest chunk of money by far — will go to the RNC. The rest is allocated sequentially to various state Republican parties.

Under federal rules, $5,000 is the maximum amount an individual can donate to a PAC like Save America.

The New York Times last month reported that the prioritization of Save America PAC reflects a new fundraising agreement between Trump and the RNC.

Recently, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump was named co-chair of the RNC.

At the start of this year, the Crafts were named co-chairs of the RNC’s Presidential Trust, a project the group organizes each election year in an effort to raise money to support the Republican presidential nominee.

While polling neck-and-neck with current Democratic President Joe Biden in a presumptive rematch this November, Trump has had to fend off several criminal cases. He’s been indicted in four cases across the country for a range of crimes.

In Georgia, Trump is being charged for his attempts to overturn the election result there, including urging the secretary of state to “find” the votes to reverse his loss. Federal prosecutors have indicted Trump with seeking to sabotage the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and illegally holding onto classified documents.

In Manhattan, he’s been charged with falsifying business records related to hush money payments for an adult-film actress during his 2016 election.

Trump’s legal team has fought the indictments at every turn, and his campaign and PAC has often used them to fundraise.

A year ago, event co-host Kelly Craft came in third in a GOP gubernatorial primary that ended up with former attorney general Daniel Cameron as the Republican candidate against Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s successful re-election. Craft’s run was largely self-funded, with the candidate loaning herself more than $10 million and Joe Craft supporting a political action committee backing her with $1.5 million.

The flyer makes no mention of where the event will take place.

The event was first reported by the National Review. Multiple Fayette County Republicans with knowledge of the event confirmed its authenticity to the Herald-Leader.