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Notes -
Ok, great.
I'll bracket off questions of what Trump actually preserved. My sense is that plenty of appeals have been formed from very minimal raising of a possible issue.
I think Trump has a plenty good argument that the relevant FECA provisions are unconstitutional, especially as applied to his case. Citizens United was pretty clear that the provisions in question do, in fact, impinge on the First Amendment generally, and the only legitimate purpose which can sustain them from constitutional pressure is to prevent quid pro quo situations, where money is exchanged for (at least the promise/hope of) official acts. Donald Trump paid for the expense out of his own money, just through an intermediary (I see almost no constitutionally-relevant difference between this and paying via a credit card, with banks as intermediaries). It makes no sense to claim that Donald Trump entered into a quid pro quo with Donald Trump where he exchanged his own money to himself for his own official acts.
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