President Donald J. Trump’s 2020 campaign has spent over half-a-million dollars into lawyers & legal fees in the last month alone, according to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). According to researcher Anna Massoglia, “Trump is using donor money to spent unprecedented money on legal expenses—far more than any presidential campaign in history http://crp.org/tlglf.”

There is, of course, an overt New Jersey connection in the report. The third law firm on the list getting money from the Trump campaign is the Manhattan-based Larocca Hornik Rosen Greenberg & Blaha, where veteran Marlboro Mayor Jon Hornik, a Democra, is a partner.

There’s a history there, and some context.

According to a 2018 Patch story, “Trump’s long-time personal lawyer Michael Cohen has publicly confirmed the Trump team paid [Stormy] Daniels $130,000, according to the report. The Marlboro connection is that Cohen hired the law partner of Marlboro Mayor Jon Hornik to represent a company created by Trump’s personal attorney.

“Cohen created an entity, EC, LLC, which it used to pay Daniels the $130,000 in hush money, according to the Press. …Hornik later confirmed to Patch that his law partner, Larry Rosen, was retained to represent EC, LLC. Rosen represented the LLC in an arbitration case filed as ‘Peggy Peterson’ in California. Peggy Peterson has been revealed to be a pseudonym for Daniels.”