As I suggested above, there are more than a few reasons to doubt this “exclusive” story. First of all, Trump’s Communications Director immediately came out and said the rumor was “‘utterly false. There is no investigation, no audit, and there never was.” On top of that, Steve Guest of the RNC called the story “categorically false,” going on to say that there was no audit or investigation of the kind taking place. I reached out to Steve myself this morning and he told me the same thing.

And if either the campaign or the committee had tens of millions of dollars suddenly disappearing, don’t you think they’d have noticed? Even if the story was rather embarrassing, they’d have to go public with it and begin proceedings to recover the funds if possible and hold someone accountable.

Further, “pocketing” that amount of money from a national campaign structure would be virtually impossible without someone catching on pretty much instantly. I can tell you from experience that one of the first things you do when setting up a political campaign is to hire an accountant and a specialized attorney to keep track of the money. You do that before you even hire a campaign manager. One of the easiest ways to trip up a campaign and send it into a nosedive is to get caught up in some sort of campaign finance scandal. An organization the size of a presidential campaign probably has an army of those people watching every dollar that comes in the door or heads back out. Nobody could get away with this. (Well, unless your name happens to be Ilhan Omar, who seems to have figured out a way around those pesky rules.)

The article in the Daily Mail also goes on to imply that Parscale is in some sort of major financial trouble due to his “lavish lifestyle.” The obvious implication here is that he needed to steal the money to pay for his many cars, boats and homes. I suppose anything is possible and people can certainly run into financial issues if they have expensive tastes, but Parscale has been working for the Trump empire for a long time. He freely admits that the association he’s enjoyed with Trump had made him “a wealthy man” at an early age. But if there was even a suspicion that he’d ripped off the boss to this degree, do you think he’d still be employed by the campaign, albeit not at the top job he previously held?

I’m not buying this unless and until we hear it from a more official source. And I still refuse to believe the RNC would go on the record denying it if there were even a hint of truth to it. It’s more likely a case of somebody nursing a case of sour grapes trying to peddle a story to cause trouble for the Trump campaign.