Hillary Clinton spent more on commercials in July than presidential rival Donald Trump spent on his entire campaign, according to new finance reports filed Saturday night.

The Democratic White House contender spent almost $26 million to produce and air television and online commercials -- the biggest portion of the nearly $49 million spent last month through her campaign committee and a joint committee that raises money for Hillary for America. The commercials are part of what has been a $120 million ad campaign. Clinton's operation also spent nearly $5 million to pay 705 employees in July, plus $2 million on travel.

Trump's campaign had its biggest spending month yet, doubling the amounts he spent in May and June. But the $18.4 million spent in July was still less than 40 percent of what Clinton's campaign spent.

Nearly half of the money, $8.4 million, went to one company: Giles-Parscale, a Web design firm whose president, Brad Parscale, serves as the Trump campaign's digital director.

The San Antonio-based company, which got its foothold designing websites for Trump's holding company, the Trump Organization, in 2011, has emerged as one of his campaign's biggest vendors, taking in $12.5 million so far. Giles-Parscale has spearheaded Trump's online fundraising effort.

The campaign also reported spending $3.2 million on travel and $1.8 million on merchandise in July. The campaign spent $773,000 to reimburse various Trump-owned companies for expenses. In all, nearly $7.7 million has been paid out to Trump companies or Trump family members to cover campaign expenditures, filings show.

Since the beginning of the 2016 race for the White House, Trump's campaign has spent $89.5 million, while Clinton's operation has spent nearly $319 million.

The two campaigns were close in fundraising last month. The Trump campaign and two joint fundraising committees it has with the Republican National Committee together pulled in $82 million, officials announced earlier this month. That came close to the $90 million that Clinton raised in conjunction with the Democratic party in July.

Trump's $82 million includes a $2 million donation from Trump himself, who has now given a total of $52 million to finance his White House bid.

Trump's staff

Trump's payroll for July included Corey Lewandowski, who received his regular $20,000 monthly fee on July 6, two weeks after he was ousted as campaign manager and had been hired by CNN as a political commentator. Trump has continued to call on Lewandowski for advice since his departure.

Lewandowski was replaced by Paul Manafort, who resigned last week as campaign chairman. Replacing him are Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News, who took over as campaign chief executive. Pollster Kellyanne Conway, formerly Trump's senior adviser, is the new campaign manager.

Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee's chief strategist and communications director, will also "be spending more time" with the Trump campaign, Conway said Sunday on ABC's This Week.

"We're working very closely with the RNC," Conway said.

She said Sunday that Trump just had the best week of his campaign, "mostly because he's able to be himself, the authentic Donald Trump" and "the pivot that he's made is on substance."

In the week ahead, the Trump campaign plans to do a state-by-state assessment, Conway said.

"And I'll be talking to all of our state directors, our field staff, our data operation, find out where we are and what they think we need," she said.

Conway said the campaign wants to get away from a focus on Trump's personality and onto the Obama administration's record, and onto Clinton as a continuation of what it describes as unpopular policies such as Obama's health care law.

"The Hillary people want this to all be about tone and temperament," Conway said. "We also want to it be about facts and figures."

But those figures won't include Trump's tax returns. Conway said Trump shouldn't release his tax returns until an audit by the Internal Revenue Service is completed, abandoning a position that she took five months ago, when she didn't work for the campaign and urged Trump to "be transparent" and release the filings.

"I've learned, since being on the inside, that this audit is a serious matter and that he has said that when the audit is complete, he will release his tax returns," Conway said. "I also know as a pollster that what concerns people most about, quote, 'taxes' is their own tax liability, and so we appreciate people being able to see Hillary Clinton's plan and Donald Trump's plan and figure out who will really get the middle-class tax relief."

According to Trump's lawyers, his tax returns filed since 2009 are under audit but those from 2002 to 2008 are no longer under audit. Conway said in an interview on CNN on Sunday that she does not want Trump to release those returns either.

"I'm glad that he's transparent about a number of things, and we're certainly running against the least accountable, least transparent, I think, joyless candidate in presidential political history," Conway said.

Trump is the first major presidential nominee from either party since 1976 not to release tax returns. Last summer, Clinton released returns from 2007 to 2014, and her campaign shared her 2015 return this month, as well as 10 years of returns from her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has said that he plans to release his tax returns, with a spokesman telling CNN that this would happen before the election.

Conway told CNN that she didn't understand why Trump's tax returns are even an issue.

"This entire tax return debate is somewhat confounding to me, in the following sense: I don't think that it creates one job, gets one more individual who does not have health insurance covered buy health insurance, particularly under the disaster that has been Obamacare with these private insurers pulling out our exchanges now and reporting billions of dollars of losses," Conway said.

Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, said the tax returns could help reveal the extent of Trump's connections with Russia, arguing that despite the departure of Manafort -- who faced questions over his work for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine -- Trump should still offer an accounting.

"There's a web of financial ties to the Russians that he refuses to disclose," Mook said on This Week. "We now need Donald Trump to explain to us the extent to which the hand of the Kremlin is at the core of his own campaign."

Clinton Foundation

Trump campaign officials countered the accusations by criticizing the Clintons' charitable foundation, which has announced that it would not accept donations from foreign contributors if Clinton were elected president.

"The fact the Clinton Foundation is still taking foreign contributions until the election, but not after, is a sign they know those donations lead to conflicts of interest," Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement, calling for the foundation to immediately cease taking foreign contributions.

Mook defended the foundation, which some Democrats have also criticized for its fundraising.

"Over 10 million people around the world get important AIDS medication, life-saving AIDS and HIV medication, because of the foundation," Mook said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union.

The foundation put into effect "unprecedented" protections that were "a big burden" when Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, and would "go even further in terms of disclosure and limits" if she becomes president, Mook said.

"This is important, life-saving work, and there were some foreign governments like Australia and Norway, that were -- that had existing donations to the foundation, and the foundation wanted them to be able to follow through on their commitment," he said.

Even if those steps will eventually prove necessary to avoid actual or apparent conflicts of interest, Mook suggested the foundation isn't going further unless Clinton becomes president.

Republicans have described the foundation as a venue for "pay to play" in which wealthy donors and foreign governments got access to the former top U.S. diplomat through her family's philanthropic work. News reports have recently revealed repeated contact between staff members at the foundation and the U.S. State Department.

Some parts of the charity network are still exempt from the rules, the Boston Globe reported on Saturday, although the group's board will "soon" meet to examine them. Those parts include the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which represented 66 percent of spending by Clinton-allied charities in 2014.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, told the New York Daily News that it would "be impossible to keep the foundation open without at least the appearance of a problem" if Clinton wins the White House in November.

Mook also addressed a federal judge's ruling on Aug. 19 that a conservative government transparency group can seek written answers from Clinton about her use of a private email server, saying the candidate would "get to work right away on getting those questions answered." He wouldn't guarantee she would respond before the election.

The questions are due Oct. 14, and Clinton will have 30 days to respond. In that scenario, she could avoid answering before Election Day on Nov. 8, although the group, Judicial Watch, has suggested it will try to get Clinton questions earlier.

Republicans are hoping that the renewed focus on Clinton's emails, as well as a more disciplined Trump campaign, will help the candidate's polling numbers.

"Donald Trump has been disciplined and mature, and I think he's going to get this thing back on track," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said on ABC.

Information for this article was contributed by Matea Gold, Anu Narayanswamy and Jenna Johnson of The Washington Post; by Chris Strohm and Ben Brody of Bloomberg News; and by Erica Werner of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/22/2016