Trump Leans On Creative Bookkeeping to Keep Up in Cash Race

Donald J. Trump’s political operation has been taking extraordinary measures in a bid to stay financially competitive with Vice President Kamala Harris, deploying aggressive and creative accounting strategies that test the legal limits of how far a candidate can go to offload the core costs of running for president.

The most startling example is the official payroll of the former president’s campaign committee.

He had only 11 people on it, as of August.

That is a tiny fraction of the more than 200 people Mr. Trump had on his campaign payroll four years ago and the more than 600 people on Ms. Harris’s campaign payroll in August, federal records show.

The reason Mr. Trump now has so few on the payroll is that he is shuffling costs from his campaign committee to other accounts allied or shared with the Republican Party. The goal of the seemingly arcane accounting maneuver is to free up millions of dollars, which would otherwise be locked up in party and fund-raising accounts, to spend on television ads for Mr. Trump.

And the shifting of payroll is just one piece of the financial puzzle.

Mr. Trump has also not been using his campaign committee to pay for many of the big rallies that are the signature events of his campaign, according to two people with knowledge of his accounting who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. Instead, the Trump team is, for accounting purposes, treating those events as fund-raisers by including backstage photo lines for contributors or donor round tables.