Jamke NEWS

Former President Donald Trump announced Monday night that his political committees raised more than $51 million over the second half of last year, to buttress what is now a massive $122 million war chest.

Trump’s latest fundraising haul is a drop from the first half of last year, when his various committees together raised a total of $82 million from January through June of 2021.

It is possible that the $82 million sum Trump’s team announced for the first half of last year included transferred money raised in the final weeks of 2020, though the exact amount transferred from the previous year is unclear.

Trump’s war chest puts him in a uniquely strong position heading into the 2022 midterms and ahead of a potential 2024 presidential run.

The Republican National Committee also reported having $56.3 million cash in hand at the end of December 2021.

In a press release Monday, Trump’s Save America political action committee said that the $51 million was raised by the former president’s multiple committees from July 1 through Dec. 31, 2021.

The average donation Trump received between his committees was $31, with a total of 1,631,648 donations, the release said.

Notably, Trump doesn’t appear to be sharing many of his donations yet. With over $122 million in cash on hand, Trump says his PACs have only donated $1.35 million to “to like-minded causes and endorsed candidates.”

Save America’s filing shows that $1 million of that contribution went to the nonprofit Conservative Partnership Institute, which is led by a slew of Trump’s close allies, including Mark Meadows, Jim DeMint and Ed Corrigan.

Much of Save America’s money in the latter half of 2021 was spent on Facebook ads, payroll, and consulting fees for various firms, including $1.5 million paid to Tim Unes’ firm Event Strategies and $60,000 paid to former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale’s firm Parscale Strategy, according to the filing. More than $240,000 also went to legal spending, the filing shows.

Over the past year, Trump has been fundraising with numerous allies through various vehicles, including his Save America PAC and his presidential campaign committee-turned PAC, Make America Great Again PAC.

Save America, in particular, was set up as a leadership PAC, which is designed to allow former and current lawmakers or prominent political figures to raise money and boost their allies, often with the purpose of advancing their political influence.

Last year, Save America raised $700,000 in a joint fundraising operation with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. More recently, the PAC raised roughly $202,000 with Trump-endorsed Florida House hopeful Anna Paulina Luna, new disclosure filings show.

Save America had also raised massive sums with the Republican National Committee in the weeks following the 2020 election, but the two have since stopped officially fundraising together. The RNC and other GOP party committees, however, continue to frequently appeal to donors by using Trump’s name in fundraising emails and messages.

The RNC has also continued to help cover Trump’s legal bills over the past few months. As previously reported by ABC News, the national party committee has paid at least $720,000 to law firms representing the former president in various legal challenges, including criminal investigations into his businesses in New York, according to campaign finance records.

In the past few months the RNC’s fundraising has dipped in comparison to the substantially larger amounts it used to report every month while it was fundraising with Trump during the 2020 election cycle. However, the RNC’s fundraising still topped the DNC’s in the second half of 2021.

Between July and December 2021, the GOP national committee reported raising a total of $74 million, while the Democratic National Committee reported raising $65 million during the same period, disclosure filings show.

In all of 2021, the RNC raised $159 million while the DNC raised $151 million.

A U.S. District Court judge rejected on Monday a plea deal that would have allowed the white Georgia man and his father convicted in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery to serve a large part of their sentences in federal prison.

Judge Lisa Godbey Wood’s decision to turn down Travis McMichael and Gregory McMichael’s plea agreements with federal prosecutors came after Arbery’s parents and two aunts gave emotional statements asking the judge to reject the deal and proceed with a federal trial next week.

“All they would have to do is stand up and say that they were motivated by hate and then this court will concede to their preferred conditions of confinement,” Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told the judge. “I do not need to hear them say they were motivated by hate. That does me no good. It does my family no good.”

She added, “It is not fair to take away this victory that I prayed and I fought for. It is not right. It is not just. It is wrong. Please listen to me. Granting these men their preferred conditions of confinement would defeat me. It gives them one last chance to spit in my face after murdering my son.”

Following Travis McMichael’s hearing on Monday, a second hearing was scheduled on the plea deal the government’s attorneys negotiated with 66-year-old Gregory McMichael. However, Godbey Wood said her decision would be the same in the case of the elder McMichael, whose attorney agreed to cancel the hearing.

Both men and their neighbor, 52-year-old William “Roddie” Bryan, were convicted on state murder charges in Arbery’s 2020 death. They were sentenced to life in prison. Travis and Gregory McMichael were sentenced without the possibility of parole.

A federal prosecutor told the judge during Monday’s hearing that the agreements called for the men to immediately be turned over to the federal Bureau of Prisons to serve 30 years in a federal penitentiary before being returned to the Georgia Department of Corrections to serve the remainder of their sentence.

Godbey Wood gave both men the option to go forward with their guilty pleas and risk her giving them a harsher sentence than what they agreed to, or to withdraw their pleas and go to trial starting on Monday.

The judge gave them until Friday to decide.

Prior to the judge’s decision, federal prosecutor Tara Lyons touted the plea deal as one that “powerfully advances the larger interest of justice.”

“Through this resolution, the defendants will accept responsibility for the full nature of their crime, admitting publicly in front of the nation that this offense was racially motivated,” Lyons said.

Federal prosecutors filed notices of plea agreements for Travis McMichael, 35, and Gregory McMichael, on Sunday in U.S. District Court in Brunswick, Georgia, and requested Monday’s hearing for Godbey Wood to review the deal.

No plea agreement was announced for Bryan.

In announcing her decision, Godbey Wood said the plea agreements would lock her into a sentence of 30 years or 360 months.

“Here in this relatively early stage in the case, I can’t say that 360 months is the precise, fair sentence in this case,” Gobey Wood said. “It could be more, it could be less, it could be that. But given the unique circumstances of this case and my desire to hear from all concerned regarding sentencing before I pronounce sentence, I am not comfortable accepting the terms of the plea agreement.”

Prior to Monday’s hearing, Arbery’s relatives slammed the plea deal, alleging it was done behind their backs. But Lyons said her office was in frequent communication with attorneys for Arbery’s family and that they assured prosecutors the family would not oppose the plea arrangements.

“We respect the court’s decision to not accept the sentencing terms of the proposed plea and to continue the hearing until Friday,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “The Justice Department takes seriously its obligation to confer with the Arbery family and their lawyers both pursuant to the Crime Victim Rights Act and out of respect for the victim.”

Clarke added, “Before signing the proposed agreement reflecting the defendants’ confessions to federal hate crimes charges, the Civil Rights Division consulted with the victims’ attorneys. The Justice Department entered the plea agreement only after the victims’ attorneys informed me that the family was not opposed to it.”

Arbery was out for a jog on Feb. 23, 2020, in the Satilla shores neighborhood near Brunswick, Georgia, when the McMichaels assumed he was a burglar, armed themselves and chased him in their pickup truck. Bryan joined the five-minute pursuit, blocking Arbery’s path with his truck and recorded video on cellphone of Travis McMichael fatally shooting Arbery with a shotgun during a struggle.

Arbery’s parents, Cooper-Jones and Marcus Arbery, asked the federal court to be allowed to assert their right under federal law to oppose the plea deal directly before the court.

“The DOJ has gone behind my back to offer the men who murdered my son a deal to make their time in prison easier for them to serve,” Cooper-Jones said in a statement before Monday’s hearing. “I have made it clear at every possible moment that I do not agree to offer these men a plea deal of any kind. I have been completely betrayed by the DOJ lawyers.”

When Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted on state charges of murdering George Floyd, reached a plea agreement on federal charges that he violated Floyd’s civil rights, he asked to be sent to federal prison even though he is expected to serve more time than the 22 years he was sentenced to in state court.

In response to Chauvin’s plea deal, legal experts told ABC News that federal penitentiaries run by the Bureau of Prisons tend to better than state prisons. The experts said federal prisons have fewer overcrowding issues, more comfortable bunks and even better food and educational resources than often cash-strapped state prisons. High-profile inmates, especially former law enforcement officers like Chauvin and Gregory McMichael, tend to also get greater protection in federal prison, the experts said.

The federal Bureau of Prisons estimated that the annual cost of housing an inmate in a federal facility in 2020 was a little over $39,000.

The annual cost of housing an inmate in a Georgia state prison is roughly $20,000, according to a 2015 study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and policy organization.

“Federal prison is going to be a lighter sentence for these men,” Lee Merritt, an attorney for Cooper-Jones said during a news conference prior to the Monday’s hearing.

Merritt also cited an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice into conditions at Georgia state prisons that was launched in September.

The DOJ said in a statement that the investigation is primarily focused on whether Georgia provides inmates reasonable protection from physical harm at the hands of other prisoners and staff.

Cooper-Jones said at Monday’s news conference that she found the plea deal “disrespectful.”

She said she learned of the deal on Sunday and has had discussions with DOJ attorneys since.

“I told them very, very adamantly I wanted them to go to state prison and do their time,” Cooper-Jones said.

In a separate news conference, Marcus Arbery said that finding out about the deal made him “mad as hell.”

He said his son’s death was a racially-motivated murder and “we want 100% justice, not half justice.”

He added, “I don’t want no chance of trying to make their lives easy.”

ABC News’ Janice McDonald and Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.

For the second time this month, at least six historically black universities and colleges have received bomb threats.

Howard University, Bowie State University, Bethune-Cookman University, Southern University, Delaware State University and Albany State University have all reported potential threats Monday.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is aware of the series of bomb threats and is working with law enforcement to address potential threats.

“As always, we would like to remind members of the public that if they observe anything suspicious to report it to law enforcement immediately,” the FBI said in a statement to ABC News.

The acting deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, Thomas Chittum, also said that agents from the bureau are responding to the reports.

“We can confirm that ATF has responded,” Chittum told reporters on a call Monday. “Of course, it is a federal crime to use interstate facilities to make a bomb threat, and so ATF will provide our investigative expertise and support to that investigation, but obviously, the facts are preliminary and unfolding.”

Albany State University in Georgia received notice of a bomb threat to the academic buildings of its campus. As local law enforcement officials investigate, all ASU campuses remained closed and employees and students were told not to report to campus.

Bowie State University in Maryland is also investigating a bomb threat with bomb technicians from the Maryland State Fire Marshal. The campus remains closed as K9s conduct sweeps of university buildings.

“OSFM Bomb Technicians and explosive detection K9s are assisting @BowieState PD with a telephonic bomb threat,” a tweet from the agency read. “Maryland State Police are on the scene. The investigation is active. Prince George’s County Police Department is also on the scene.”

Southern University and A&M College also received a bomb threat Monday and went into lockdown. The university told students classes were canceled and that they should remain in their dorm rooms until an all-clear was issued.

Delaware State University told ABC News that University Police are investigating and that employees and commuter students have been instructed not to report to the campus until further notice. Residential students have also been asked to remain in their dorm rooms.

Howard University and Bethune-Cookman University also report potential bomb threats to their campuses, according to ABC-affiliate ABC7 News.

Judson Bible College, which is not an HBCU, was also targeted.

On Jan. 4, at least seven historically Black colleges and universities received bomb threats, according to school officials.

However, no bombs were found on the campuses of Florida Memorial University, North Carolina Central University, Prairie View A&M University, The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Florida Memorial University, Norfolk State University and Xavier University of Louisiana.

The threats forced campuses to lockdown or evacuate and local law enforcement was alerted.

Editor’s note: ABC News incorrectly listed the HBCUs targeted with bomb threats Monday. Judson Bible College was included but it is not an HBCU, however it was also targeted.

ABC News’ Luke Barr contributed to this report.