By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
A company owned by a Lake Worth Beach woman who was Donald Trump’s executive assistant in the White House and later reportedly a key government witness in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case against him before it was abandoned has been paid more than $310,000 this year by the Republican National Committee.
Federal Election Commission records show the RNC paid the money to 1600 Collective LLC to purchase “donor mementos” in eight disbursements between March 12 and June 11.
Florida corporate records list Molly A. Michael, 32, as the sole owner and authorized member of the company. Her husband, Aaron Michael who quit his job in May as a project manager for FP&L, lists himself as co-owner on his LinkedIn page.
“Thank you to our friends and loved ones who gave us this idea in the first place and who have supported us from the beginning, becoming customers and promoting the business. You know who you are, and we are so thankful,” he wrote.
In addition to cooperating with Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigators, Molly Michael also was a witness for the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Testifying at a deposition in response to a subpoena, she spent much of March 24, 2022 responding to questions about what took place in the Oval Office of the White House.
Two years later, on March 19, 2024, she incorporated the 1600 Collective with Matthew Cummings of Westerville, Ohio. Cummings, who is married to Alexandra Stone, chief of staff to Congressman Brian Jack, R-GA, resigned two months later.
The 1600 Collective went online in July. Its website says it is “a swag company specializing in elegant & highly custom swag which proudly partners with clients from the US government to corporations to non-profit organizations. We are run by a husband & wife team dedicated to giving our clients a one-on-one design experience, creating products they are proud to present to their valued donors, clients, and employees.”
‘WE ARE GOOD AND DON’T CARE FOR A STORY’
When Florida Bulldog called the company, Aaron Michael answered the phone. He declined to discuss the RNC’s purchases after consulting with his wife. “I would recommend reaching out to the RNC about questions relating to their stuff,” he said. “We don’t feel we are able to disclose that information.”
He said 1600 Collective’s other customers include “some utilities and some nonprofits, as well as some corporations.” He declined to identify any. “I haven’t gotten their permission.”
Asked whether President Trump has helped their company, Aaron Michael said, “I appreciate the inquiry, but, I mean, we are good and don’t care for a story.”
Trump would seem to have had some involvement. Much of the merchandise displayed on the 1600 Collective’s website, from medallions and cufflinks to golf gloves and keychains, contain President Trump’s name, the presidential seal or depict images of the White House.
In her testimony to Congress, Molly Michael told how she “got her foot in the door in politics” working on the presidential campaign of Ben Carson in 2016. She later worked for Trump’s campaign and began at the White House in 2017. After a year “on the First Lady’s team” she began working “full time in the outer Oval functioning as an executive assistant.”
Represented for free by lawyers Daniel Benson and Jonathan Gonzales of the firm then known as Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, headed by Donald Trump’s former longtime personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, Michael described her duties as answering calls, relaying messages, managing schedules and coordinating meetings for President Trump.
Questioned about what President Trump said and did that Jan. 6th, Michael’s most frequent answer was “I don’t recall” prompting several incredulous responses from committee counsel, whose names are redacted from the transcript that was made public.
“The President of the United States calls you and asks what you think. You describe for him the violence occurring at the Capitol. And you don’t remember him expressing any distress, any frustration, any anger, any anything. Is that right?”
“The phones were ringing, A lot was happening. I don’t recall,” Michael said.
TRUMP EMPLOYEE #2
ABC News, The New York Times and other media outlets reported in 2023 that Molly Michael is the person identified as Trump Employee #2 in the Miami indictment that charged Trump with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, wrongly withholding and corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheming to conceal and making false statements or misrepresentations.
Before those charges were dropped upon Trump’s election to a second term as president in November 2024, Trump denied them.
Michael told the Jan. 6th Committee that Trump asked her to move to Florida and stay on as his assistant at Mar-a-Lago after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. She did, but life working at Trump’s residence grew intense on Aug. 8, 2022 when FBI agents searched the property, seizing sensitive records the National Archives had asked Trump, without success, to return to the government.
In September 2023, ABC News reported that Michael “told federal investigators last year she grew increasingly concerned with how Trump handled recurring requests from the National Archives for the return of all government documents being kept in boxes at Mar-a-Lago and she felt that Trump’s claims about it at the time would be easy to disprove.”
The story also reported that it was Michael who photographed the many boxes that were stored at Mar-a-Lago. Those photos were later included in the indictment.
“Speaking to federal investigators,” the ABC story continued, “Michael recounted how, by late 2021, as many as 90 boxes of materials from Trump’s time as president were moved into a basement storage room at Mar-a-Lago, and how – as pressure from the National Archives mounted – she and Trump aide Walt Nauta [who was indicted with Trump] would bring boxes to Trump’s residence for him to review.”
ABC also reported that Trump turned over to the National Archives 15 boxes containing “nearly 200 classified documents” and that archives officials then contacted the FBI. About the same time, Trump “asked Michael to help spread a message that no more boxes existed” and she became concerned because she knew many more boxes existed.
Michael informed Trump when the FBI sought to interview her in 2022. “In response, Trump allegedly told her, ‘You don’t know anything about the boxes,’ ” the network reported.
While the special prosecutor’s case into Trump’s handling of classified documents is history, she may still be a witness in the matter. That’s because the Fulton County, GA District Attorney’s Office election interference case against Trump, while currently on hold, continues.
Court records filed in Palm Beach show that in October 2023 the DA’s office filed papers in circuit court apparently seeking to compel testimony from Michael as a “material interstate witness.” The case was quickly closed after the State Attorney’s Office advised the court without elaboration that “jurisdiction over this matter is no longer needed.” (The court docket also mistakenly indicates that Michael was charged with a misdemeanor, which she was not, according to a prosecutor’s spokesman.)
TRUMP AND HUSH MONEY
In Michael’s testimony to the Jan. 6th Committee’s lawyers, she explained that she was not paid by Trump while working at Mar-a-Lago, but by Save America, the leadership political action committee (PAC) he established six days after his 2020 electoral loss.
Issue One, a cross-partisan political reform group based in Washington, D.C., reported in February 2021 that Save America collected $31.5 million from the day of its creation through the end of 2020 – just eight weeks.
“Trump’s Save America PAC may very well be a textbook example of a political slush fund, said the group’s Executive Director Meredith McGehee. “While Trump could use the money he raises for this PAC to support like-minded candidates, Trump may also use these funds to cover travel, lodging, dining, legal expenses, or entertainment expenses like golfing — including at Trump properties — for years to come.”
Michael resigned as Trump’s assistant in 2022. Despite her unique insider’s view of Trump’s first term, there have been no reports that she’s writing a book about her experiences.
Trump, of course, has a history of paying hush money to suppress negative information about him.
In May 2024, he was found guilty in New York of 34 felonies in a scheme to influence the 2016 election that involved paying hush money to a porn actress, Stormy Daniels. During the trial, the ex-publisher of the National Enquirer – David Pecker – detailed how Karen McDougal was paid $150,000 by American Media Inc. in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign to “catch and kill” her story about her alleged affair with Trump.
In 2018, The Washington Post reported that former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman was offered a $15,000-a-month contract by Trump campaign advisor Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law “to stay silent’’ after being fired by then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly seven months previously.
The RNC’s treasurer today is Florida State Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota. He is Trump’s earliest and most loyal supporter in Florida.
Gruters served as state co-chair of Trump’s first presidential campaign. In January of this year, Trump backed Gruters for RNC chair. Trump also has endorsed Gruters in his current bid for election as Florida’s chief financial officer in 2026.
By law, Gruters is responsible for authorizing all committee expenditures. Florida Bulldog sought to ask treasurer Gruters about the expenditures to 1600 Collective that totaled $311,659.90.
Gruters, an accountant by trade who is also a state senator, did not respond to requests for comment.
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