There’s something about Donald Trump that attracts petty corruption: Scott Pruitt’s $40,000 phone booth, Ryan Zinke’s microbrewery, Tom Price’s private-jet addiction. For whatever reason, people in the president’s orbit feel empowered to use their power to grift. And it’s not just administration officials. The most recent example comes by way of David Bossie, one of Trump’s very first political advisers and a senior staffer on his presidential campaign. According to a new report, Bossie’s Presidential Coalition raked in millions of dollars from donors giving less than $200 each in a single year—only to spend most of it on Bossie’s salary, pricey consultants, and efforts to raise more money.

According to I.R.S. filings reviewed by Axios and the Campaign Legal Center, Bossie’s 527 political organization raised $18.5 million between 2017 and 2018, promising donors that the group was “dedicated to identifying and supporting conservative candidates running for office at the state and local levels of government.” Its fund-raising mailers featured an image of the White House inside its logo, donation suggestions of $45 made “in honor” of the 45th president, and, just to drive the point home, a photo of Bossie next to Trump.

But, shockingly, those claims were somewhat misleading. Of the $15.4 million that the Presidential Coalition spent during that period, only $425,442 (or 3 percent) was spent on candidates, political committees, or state and local ads supporting said candidates. (In contrast, the Republican Governors Association, a similar 527 organization, spent about 80 percent of its expenditures on those direct political activities.) As for the remaining 97 percent, the C.L.C. traced it directly into the pockets of the swampy, political-consultant class—including Bossie himself. According to I.R.S. documents, the Presidential Coalition spent millions of dollars on contracts with 14 direct-marketing firms to fuel fund-raising efforts, several million dollars more on postage to send said mailers and books, at least $1.1 million to telemarketing firms associated with InfoCision (which was previously accused by former employees of preying on elderly donors), and $1.2 million on donor-cultivation lists. (InfoCision has denied the allegations, but agreed to pay a $250,000 settlement to the Federal Trade Commission in 2018 over misleading practices.) Bossie himself diverted $659,493 to two of his other political organizations, Citizens United and Citizens United Foundation, from which he drew a $105,541 salary. (Incidentally, Citizens United is the group behind the Supreme Court ruling that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns and messaging.)

“Unfortunately, these practices are not unique to the Presidential Coalition: there is a cottage industry of groups targeting vulnerable communities with self-serving borderline scams,” the C.L.C. report states. “What sets the Presidential Coalition apart is that it is explicitly—and successfully—capitalizing on Bossie’s connection with the President of the United States.”

The targets of this apparent effort were die-hard middle-class Trump supporters, many of whom happened to be elderly. Two-thirds of the donors gave less than $200 in a single year to Bossie, who promised in mailers and Facebook ads that they were helping “grow the Republican ‘farm team,’” and “train and prepare conservative candidates to run and win in local elections.” Of the donors who gave more than $200 and listed an occupation, the majority were retirees. When Axios reached out to more than a dozen donors identified in the I.R.S. filings, they all said they thought the money was officially helping the Trump effort. A few, however, admitted they were growing suspicious. “I thought the money was going toward the president,” Barbara Bloom, a retired widow in her seventies, told Axios. “You know, I’d get repeated duplicates for things. [Their mailers] would most of the time say the first $15 was for your membership, but how many times do you pay membership? . . . It’s ridiculous, it’s insulting. I’m just really disenchanted with it all.”