Despite claiming to have a net worth as high as $10 billion, Donald Trump is also notoriously stingy when it comes to spending money that someone else could foot the bill. Trump infamously stiffed contractors who worked for him; shifted money from his son’s cancer charity into his own businesses; and mostly used other people’s money to fund philanthropy for which he took credit. “It’s called OPM. I do it all the time in business. It’s called other people’s money,” he explained last year. “There's nothing like doing things with other people’s money.” So it should come as no surprise that Trump—however rich he really is—has turned to the Republican National Committee and his re-election campaign coffers to take the edge off the steep legal fees he has amassed amid Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The legal defense for a sitting president is not cheap. CNN reported Tuesday that in August alone, the R.N.C. spent more than $230,000 on Trump’s legal defense—$131,250 and $100,000 to the president’s personal attorneys Jay Sekulow and John Dowd, respectively. The organization also spent just shy of $200,000 on legal fees for Donald Trump Jr., an executive at the Trump Organization. According to CNN, the R.N.C. paid more than $166,000 to the eldest Trump son’s attorney Alan Futerfas and $30,000 to the Williams & Jensen firm. All of the money put toward the Trumps’ legal funds was pulled from the organization’s legal proceedings account, so the funds “do not reduce by a dime the resources we can put towards our political work,” R.N.C. spokesperson Cassie Smedile told Reuters.

Trump, who began raising funds for his re-election on the day of his inauguration, is reportedly using that campaign money to help pay his bills, too. Reuters reported Tuesday that the Donald Trump re-election campaign fund paid the Jones Day law firm $4 million. It is, however, unclear how much of this sum was put toward the ongoing Russia investigation versus routine legal matters associated with presidential campaigns.

Trump is certainly not the only politician who has used donor money to help pick up a legal tab. Former Idaho Senator Larry Craig was sued by the F.E.C. for using campaign funds to pay for his legal defense stemming from his infamous 2007 arrest in a sex sting at the Minneapolis Airport. (A D.C. federal judge ordered Craig to repay the $197,533 in campaign funds and a $45,000 fine.)

And as legal and ethics expert Kathleen Clark explained to me, the fact that Mueller’s probe is focused on whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government in the 2016 election, his use of campaign funds to supplement his legal fees doesn’t spark any red flags. “The Federal Election Commission permits candidates to use campaign money to pay for legal services regarding investigations that arise out of campaigns or that arise from a successful candidate’s service in public office,” Clark said. But she noted that while it may be legal, Trump’s use of the funds raises other issues. “There is the question of whether those who contributed to a campaign anticipated or would have appreciated that the money was going to be used not for campaigning for office, but instead for defending this alleged billionaire,” Clark said. “He is essentially using the money from individuals who contributed to his campaign to save himself money.”

Trump’s non-billionaire staffers in the White House and former campaign aides aren’t so lucky. Michael Flynn, who served on Trump’s campaign and briefly as his national security adviser, is expected to spend millions on his defense, and recently launched a legal defense fund. Paul Manafort was forced to change lawyers, reportedly in part for financial reasons. Michael Caputo, another Trump aide who has hired his own lawyers to represent him in the Mueller probe, said he liquidated his children’s college fund to pay his bills. With top-flight lawyers charging between $750 and $900 per hour, even the lowest-level White House staffers could end up on the hook for $30,000 to $54,000 if they require a lawyer for an interview with the F.B.I.

It’s a cruel reality of life in Washington. Bill and Hillary Clinton, who faced a different brand of legal troubles than Trump is currently confronting, did not use campaign funds to pay for their legal fees. Instead, they set up two legal defense funds, which reportedly paid out a combined total of more than $8 million. And while Hillary infamously claimed she and Bill were “dead broke” when they left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, as I reported earlier this year, the real burden typically falls to staffers who, without the same name recognition as their boss or high-figure salaries, can face crushing legal debt.