Trump started the summer with nearly $54 million for his re-election and his party

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump started the summer with nearly $53.6 million stockpiled in bank accounts of his campaign committee and two affiliated fundraising operations. He and his party face tough midterm races for Congress in November and are planning for his re-election.

Trump's campaign committee and the two joint fundraising groups he runs with the Republican National Committee together brought in $17.7 million during the April-to-June fundraising quarter, according to reports filed Sunday with the Federal Election Commission.

That's a slight dip from the $20.2 million the three operations collected during the first three months of the year, but Trump's pace is far ahead of his predecessors. Barack Obama, for example, waited until the third year of his presidency to begin campaigning and fundraising in earnest.

In all, the three Trump-aligned committees have raised nearly $90 million since Trump took office, although his election is still more than two years away.

Before the 2020 presidential election, Republicans are racing to protect their hold on Congress. Democrats need to flip 23 GOP seats to take control of the U.S. House.

Trump, who has 53.1 million Twitter followers, relies heavily on small-dollar donations to drive his campaign funding: More than 60 percent of contributions directly to his campaign flowed in amounts of $200 or smaller, according to the filing with federal election regulators.

“We are thrilled with the continued support of so many Americans who resoundingly approve of Donald Trump’s performance as President,” Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law and a senior adviser to his campaign, said in a statement Sunday night.

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The Trump campaign and its two other fundraising arms – Trump Victory and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee – spent more than $8.5 million on operating costs during the second quarter of the year. Those expenses ranged from legal costs to the nearly $400,000 the Trump Make America Great Again committee spent to buy T-shirts, caps and other campaign swag.

Trump's campaign spent a little more than $338,000 on legal expenses from April 1 to June 30 – a sharp drop from the $834,670 it reported spending during the first three months of the year.

The legal bills of Trump's campaign committee alone have topped $4.35 million since the start of the election cycle, as he, his family members and staffers deal with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race, as well as legal challenges from Stormy Daniels, a porn star who said she had sex with Trump in 2006.

Trump denied the affair. Daniels sued to break free of a confidentiality agreement she signed with Trump's then-lawyer Michael Cohen days before the 2016 election.

The campaign's legal expenses show nearly $180,000 to Jones Day, a law firm that represented the campaign in parts of the Russia investigation.

Among the smaller payments: $12,300 in April to Charles Harder, a Beverly Hills attorney representing Trump in the Daniels' case. Harder sought unsuccessfully to stop the publication of an unflattering book on Trump's White House.

This year, Trump allies set up a separate legal expense account, the Patriot Legal Expense Fund, as a way for Trump aides caught up in the Russia investigation to pay their bills. Details on what it raised and spent have not been disclosed.