Massachusetts AG Andrea Campbell takes on President Trump: Credit cards underwrite fight

AG Andrea Campbell says dumping taxpayer dollars into her fight against President Trump is protecting Massachusetts residents, but critics argue her spending signals a desire to advance her political career. Campbell has filed 29 lawsuits against the Trump administration, and the Bay State attorney general claims she has traveled to Washington, D.C., three times already during the president’s second term. The AG’s office is using taxpayer-funded credit cards to aid its battle with what it describes as the administration’s “cruel and unlawful actions,” dropping $5,361 on D.C. hotels in the latter half of last fiscal year, a Herald analysis shows. Campbell is facing heat from the Massachusetts Republican Party and a state fiscal watchdog after an initial Herald review found that her office’s total spending with state-issued procurement cards, or P-cards, cost taxpayers some $288,146 in Fiscal Year 2025. Of that amount, the office spent $19,564 on D.C.-related expenditures, including hotel stays, Amtrak train service and conference registration fees for staffers to attend trainings at the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units. That’s on top of the 12%, or $9 million, budget increase that the AG’s office received for fiscal year 2026, bringing its total allocation to $83 million, to support its fight against the Trump administration. While all of its lawsuits are active, the AG’s office says that the “minimal costs” spent behind its fight are “largely administrative court costs,” ranging from filing and attorney appearance fees to “in some cases, modest bond payments.” The office did not provide the Herald with the actual cost that has gone into its wide-ranging legal disputes with the administration. “Our work countering the Trump Administration has preserved rights, freedoms, and billions in federal funding against illegal attack,” Campbell said in a statement shared with the Herald on Friday. “The return on the small cost of that work makes it an excellent and historically important investment.” Going after Trump On Friday, a federal judge in Boston blocked the Trump administration from ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the U.S. illegally, a case Campbell’s office brought forth in part. Campbell and her counterparts behind the suit have argued that Trump’s birthright citizenship order is unconstitutional and threatens millions of dollars for health insurance services that are contingent on citizenship status. P-card bills, which the Herald obtained through a public records request, show that Campbell spent $640 on hotel stays at the Hyatt Place in D.C., on May 14 and 15, when she attended arguments in the birthright citizenship case at the Supreme Court. The issue is expected to move quickly back to the nation’s highest court following Friday’s ruling. Critics say Campbell’s animosity toward Trump is just as strong as that of her predecessor, Gov. Maura Healey, who, as attorney general, sued the president’s first administration 96 times. That mark was more than all but three of Healey’s counterparts from other states. Healey won 77% of those cases, the analysis found. Immigration ranked second with 13 total lawsuits, trailing 58 environment-related complaints. “Attorney General Campbell has done what many thought impossible: She is on pace to surpass her predecessor’s politicization of an office that once stood for protecting consumers, not bilking them with overseas junkets and chauffeured drivers,” MassGOP Executive Director John Milligan told the Herald. Taxpayers pay Milligan was referring to how the Herald’s initial review of P-card spending in the AG’s office found Campbell racked up about $13,627 while attending a conference in France last July, with $9,000 of that amount going toward transportation through Avis Chauffeur. The Herald also found that the AG’s office had P-card expenditures stemming from 31 states in FY25, from California to Disney World in Florida. In addition, Campbell flew to the Caribbean vacation destination of St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, last month, to attend the Attorney General Alliance’s annual conference. The AG’s office has not provided the total costs of the trips to Paris and St. Thomas, nor has it shared how often Campbell and her staff use taxpayer-funded P-cards while traveling. Of the office’s D.C.-related credit card expenditures last fiscal year, registration fees for staffers to attend trainings at the National Association of Attorneys General marked the largest share at $8,900, according to the Herald’s review. Hotel stays trailed just behind at $8,604, with 62.3% of that amount coming after Trump retook office in January. “This just perpetuates the notion that the Attorney General has higher political aspirations,” Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance spokesman Paul Diego Craney said of Campbell’s D.C. hotel spending. Political aspirations Before Bay Staters elected Campbell as attorney general in November 2022, the 43-year-old Democrat served on the Boston City Council from 2016 to 2022, several of those years as council president. Campbell lost a mayoral bid in 2021. Campbell’s first trip to D.C. this year came in late February when she testified at a “spotlight forum” that Bay State Sen. Elizabeth Warren held on her brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Records show that the AG’s office spent $1,019 on hotel stays at the Hyatt Place during the trip, when Campbell was in D.C. on Feb. 24 and 25, her office told the Herald. In her testimony, Campbell highlighted the impact of soaring housing costs and utility bills on Bay Staters, calling affordability the “number one issue affecting our constituents.” “In addition to increasing prices,” she said, “there are companies and individuals preying on our consumers and devising ways to steal their money and scam and cheat them out of their hard-earned dollars.” Republican gubernatorial candidates Mike Kennealy and Brian Shortsleeve are slamming Campbell’s fight against the Trump administration and her credit card spending habits. They connected their frustrations to how the AG has yet to enforce the audit of the Legislature. “If she spent less time acting as the President’s chief antagonist,” Kennealy said in a statement, “and more time doing her job as the Commonwealth’s top law enforcement officer – enforcing the will of her constituents – we might have gotten the audit of the Legislature that 72% of Massachusetts citizens voted for.” Shortsleeve added, respectively, he believes Campbell “should be suing the Legislature to enforce the audit,” which he said would be a “better use of money.” “Spending (nearly) $300,000 on junkets is a slap in the face to the hard-working people of Massachusetts,” Shortsleeve said in a statement shared with the Herald. Campbell has said that she voted for the ballot question last fall, but the AG has raised concerns over whether Auditor Diana DiZoglio can constitutionally review financial and contract documents within the Legislature. Lawmakers have also pushed back, pointing to routine audits of their work conducted by outside agencies and made public online. More to come in 2025 Campbell’s most recent trip to D.C. came last month, when she testified at a forum that the Joint Democratic Congressional Judiciary Committee hosted on June 23. The AG highlighted how the lawsuits her office has filed have helped block funding cuts to “life-saving medical research and vital state services.” Campbell spent $311 at a Hilton hotel on that trip, P-card records show. “The AGO is devoted to protecting the people and economy of the Commonwealth,” the office said in a statement shared with the Herald, “and we have demonstrated that commitment more strongly than ever in 2025.” Related Articles Massachusetts AG’s credit card spending stirs debate between GOP gubernatorial candidates Massachusetts Attorney General travels world on taxpayers’ dime: ‘Expensive junkets’ AG Andrea Campbell has picked up where her predecessor, Gov. Maura Healey, left off taking on the Trump administration. (Matt Stone/Boston Herald) Jacquelyn Martin/ The Associated PressCampbell has also gone to DC to support Sen. Elizabeth Warren's agenda. (AP)