The Messenger:

Former President Donald Trump is planning a candlelight dinner fundraiser with his sons at his Florida Mar-a-Lago club this fall to help pay the legal bills of those ensnared in the four separate criminal cases he faces, sources familiar with the effort tell The Messenger.

The exact date and details of the event – which could raise between $500,000 to $1 million – are still being ironed out for the Patriot Legal Defense Fund, according to two sources familiar with the planning who did not have authorization to speak on the record.

The fund is designed to primarily help Trump’s codefendants and witnesses in the cases against him, and it’s supposed to operate in tandem with Trump’s Save America PAC, which will primarily handle his legal bills, the sources said.

Until this summer, Save America had covered nearly all the legal expenses of Trump and his various employees, former employees, advisers and allies who had been swept up in the sprawling web of investigations. The committee spent at least $22 million on legal expenses in the first six months of the year, according to the most recent filings with the Federal Elections Commission.

“Save America wasn’t really designed as a legal defense fund, so as the legal landscape evolved, so did this effort,” a Trump official familiar with the planning told The Messenger. “The fact is that the Department of Justice is trying to bankrupt people and make them drown under legal bills, but Donald Trump is not going to let them.”