Trump Raised $200m From False Election Claims What Happens To The Money Now
The president could use the funds to ensure he and his allies remain a powerful force in US politics
The battle is lost. The supreme court and electoral college have spoken. Even the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, so adept at remaking the rules for political advantage, has acknowledged that Donald Trump will not be the next president.
But the money flowing into Trumps political coffers suggests that defeat will not drive the soon-to-be-former president into the political shadows.
Trump has been on a fundraising drive since the election, rapidly bringing in an astonishing $200m or more on the back of his false claims that the vote was rigged.
His campaign bombarded supporters with emails and text messages as many as 30 a day pleading for donations to a fighting fund to challenge the result. But with the election settled, that is not where the money is going.
Most of the cash is directed to Save America, an organisation formed as a leadership political action committee shortly after the election. Leadership Pacs were designed to allow individuals to raise money in support of a favoured candidate and Trump cannot legally use the proceeds to directly fund a run for office himself, such as another bid for the presidency in four years.
But Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance specialist at the Campaign Legal Center, said Trumps fundraising was unprecedented and evidence of undimmed political ambition.
Online Conspiracy Theorists: Leila Centner Michael And Caryn Borland
David and Leila Centner have never spoken publicly about their support for Trump and hadn’t made a political donation until they gave a combined $1 million to support Trumps 2020 campaign. Come Jan. 6, the Miami couple were VIP guests at the rally on the Ellipse, according to organizers. The couple declined to comment through a spokesperson.
David Centner started and sold several successful web businesses, then made a fortune on a company that processed highway tolls. In 2019, taking advantage of a provision in Trumps tax bill, the Centners reportedly invested $40 million in a fund to build affordable housing for teachers. The tax incentive, known as Opportunity Zones, was intended to entice investors into developing poorer neighborhoods. But many wealthy and well-connected people have foundwaysto use it to subsidize their preexisting projects.
After not being able to find a school that felt right for their daughter, the Centners started their own, the brightly colored Centner Academy in Miamis Design District.
Some school parents objected when Leila Centner used the building to host a campaign event for a conservative mayoral candidate. According to emails quoted in the Miami New Times, Centner responded to their concerns by saying, Please do not tell me what types of events I can host in my own building after hours.
We cannot allow recently vaccinated people to be near our students until more information is known.
Rnc Defends Use Of Trumps Name In Its Fundraising
Former President Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 28 in Orlando, Fla.
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WASHINGTON The Republican National Committee is defending its right to use former President Donald Trumps name in fundraising appeals after he demanded they put an end to the practice.
In a Monday letter to Trump attorney Alex Cannon, RNC chief counsel J. Justin Riemer said the committee has every right to refer to public figures as it engages in core, First Amendment-protected political speech and said it will continue to do so in pursuit of these common goals.
But he maintained that Trump had also reaffirmed to the chair of the RNC, Ronna McDaniel, over the weekend that he approves of the RNCs current use of his name in fundraising and other materials, including for our upcoming donor retreat event at Palm Beach at which we look forward to him participating.
Trump responded to the letter with a statement that put that agreement in doubt. No more money for RINOS, or Republican in name only, he stated. They do nothing but hurt the Republican Party and our great voting base they will never lead us to Greatness. He instead again urged his supporters to send their contributions directly to his own Save America PAC by using his personal website, adding, We will bring it all back stronger than ever before!
Despite the letters, the RNC and others have continued to fundraise off of Trumps name.
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Trump Insists His Campaigns Multimillion
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Over the weekend, The New York Timesexposed a Trump campaign scam so simple and perfectly Trumpian that its actually a wonder the ex-president hasnt had the scheme trademarked taken to Fox News to brag about what a genius he is for so thoroughly swindling his base. As Shane Goldmacher reports, Donald Trumps campaign ripped off supporters for tens of millions of dollars by making it so that when they donated money, the default option authorized the campaign to transfer the pledged amount from peoples bank accounts not once but every single week. Later, the campaign introduced a second prechecked box that doubled a persons contribution and was thus known internally as a money bomb. In order for people to have noticed this, they would have had to wade through lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.
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Oh, and the scheme didnt stop after Trump lost the election. According to the Times, his campaign continued the weekly withdrawals through prechecked boxes all the way through December 14 as he raised tens of millions of dollars for his new political action committee, Save America.
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Elsewhere!
How Refunds To Trump Donors Soared In 2020
Refunds are shown as the percentage of money received by each operation to date via WinRed and ActBlue.
Trump
Around March 2020, the pre-filled check box first appeared on Mr. Trumps online donation form.
Total online refunds in 2020, in millions
$122
Around March 2020, the pre-filled check box first appeared on Mr. Trumps online donation form.
Total online refunds in 2020, in millions
$122
Total online refunds in 2020, in millions
$122
Total online refunds in 2020,
in millions
Biden
Note: Donations and refunds to former President Donald J. Trump include those made via WinRed for the following organizations: Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., Trump Victory, Trump Make America Great Again Committee, Save America, and the Republican National Committee. Donations and refunds to President Biden include those made via ActBlue for the following groups: Biden for President, Biden Victory Fund, Biden Action Fund, Biden Fight Fund, and the Democratic National Committee.
Several bank representatives who fielded fraud claims directly from consumers estimated that WinRed cases, at their peak, represented as much as 1 to 3 percent of their workload. An executive for one of the nations larger credit-card issuers confirmed that WinRed at its height accounted for a similar percentage of its formal disputes.
That still amounts to about 200,000 disputed transactions that Mr. Miller said added up to $19.7 million.
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National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People
The NAACP’s mission is “to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.” There was an increase in hate crimes following Trump’s election, so by donating to the NAACP you could be helping prevent future hate crimes.
Donations To Trump Fell Prior To Georgia Primary Losses: Report
Online political contributions to Donald Trump appear to have declined substantially in recent months ahead of the former president’s embarrassing primary losses this week, as some believe his influence over the Republican Party may be fading.
Trump’s efforts to unseat top incumbent Republicans in Georgia resulted in a significant failure during Tuesday’s primary. The southern state’s GOP Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who drew the former president’s anger after they refused to assist with overturning President Joe Biden‘s election win in their state, handily won their primaries by large double-digit margins.
Kemp beat Trump-endorsed former Senator David Perdue by a margin of about 74 percent to 22 percenta lead of more than 50 points for the incumbent Republican governor. Raffensperger similarly beat Trump-backed Representative Jody Hice with a margin of approximately 52 percent to about 33 percentnearly a 20-point lead in favor of Georgia’s current top elections official.
The New York Times reported Saturday that some Republicans see these failures as a potential sign that Trump’s “untouchability” in GOP politics “has been punctured.” The newspaper further reported that Trump’s Republican rivals have been “emboldened,” noting that his “average daily online contributions have declined every month for the last seven months that federal data is available.”
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Trump Has Donated His Presidential Salary
Trump is not the first president to donate his salary. Former Presidents John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover, both wealthy before they took office, donated all their earnings. Forbes reports Trumps net worth as of July 9 at $2.1 billion, making him the first president to be a billionaire.
When Trump announced his decision to forgo a salary, critics expressed doubt because presidents are required to be compensated for their work. To get around this, Trump takes $1 each year from his paychecks.
According to news coverage and White House news releases, Trump has written checks equal to a quarter of his $400,000 annual salary every quarter to various government agencies:
2017
Trump and his constituents have not yet announced where he will donate his salary for the first and second quarters of 2020.
The president came under scrutiny for donating $100,000 to the Department of Health and Human Services after proposing a 10% budget cut totaling billions of dollars. Hes also proposed cuts totaling amounts larger than his donations for the National Parks Service and the Department of Education.
More:Fact check: US government did not engineer COVID-19
Trump’s Save America Pac Is Raking In Donations What Can That Money Be Spent On
The Trump campaign’s fundraising shows no signs of abating, though Election Day was over a month ago. Since November 3, the campaign, Republican National Committee, Trump Victory and Trump Make America Great Again joint committees, and President Trump’s new political action committee, Save America, have collected $207.5 million in donations, his campaign announced Thursday.
“These tremendous fundraising numbers show President Trump remains the leader and source of energy for the Republican Party, and that his supporters are dedicated to fighting for the rightful, legal outcome of the 2020 general election,” campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement.
As the president’s election challenges continue with lawsuits and recounts in battleground states without a change in the voting results in any state so far his campaign website is begging supporters to give to his “election defense fund” with a meaningless pitch: “Please contribute ANY AMOUNT in the NEXT HOUR and you can increase your impact by 1000%!”
“President Trump needs YOU to step up to make sure we have the resources to protect the integrity of the Election,” the website implored on Friday.
Despite the rhetoric on the website and Stepien’s remarks about supporting the “rightful, legal outcome” of the election, the fine print states that the vast majority of donations are not going toward funding Mr. Trump’s litigation to overturn the election, but rather, to his new leadership PAC, Save America.
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Meet The People Donating To Donald Trump
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump likes to boast about his enormous wealth and how he doesn’t need anyone else’s money to pay for his presidential campaign. That hasn’t stopped tens of thousands of people from chipping in with checks as small as $10 to let the Republican candidate know they’re behind him.
Trump has taken in 73,942 contributions, a total that surpasses several of GOP rivals, despite the billionaire businessman’s regular declarations on the campaign trail that, “I’m self-funding my campaign.”
GOP frontrunner and real estate mogul Donald Trump has made this a hallmark of his stump speeches and interviews in his quest for the nomination. It gets the loudest cheers at his speeches from crowds all over the country. And yet, according to the latest Federal Election Commission filings, Trump is no longer a self-funder. He is getting too many donations for that – especially for someone who is going out of his way not to ask for money.
Financial reports filed last week show that more than 70 percent of the $3.9 million he raised from July through September came from people giving $200 or less. That rate of small-donor contributions is second only to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s in the Democratic race.
The average Trump contribution was $50.46, his campaign said.
“And even though my contribution was small, I want him to have the feeling that there are other people that are behind him,” she said.
Sneed: Even Though I Never Gave The Man A Dime Nor Voted For Him Ive Been The Recipient Of A Never
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally on March 12 in Florence, South Carolina.
Each day a question arises.
To mark as spam or not?
The daily drawerful of dross in my email is a stew of political plots, burial plots, twitter twaddle exhortations of money and advice on how to turn the humble lentil into an extravagant luxury.
Which brings me to the reason for my recent data distress.
Donald Trump.
Yes. Yes. Requests for donations from Team Trump, Donald J. Trump, and Donald Trump Jr., became a new mega MAGA experience for me last week.
I decided to actually read Trumps campaign cash requests instead of trash them in the wake of news he had more than $110 million in his Save America PAC at the end of February more cash than both the DNC and RNC coffers together .
Thus, my intro to Trump PAC ack ack began with an urgent early morning plea from Trump to defend him because the Left wont stop. The Left is coming for us.
It was accompanied by news I was being sent a Trump-signed one-of-a-kind book titled Our Journey Together if I quickly dispatched some cash to Save America!
I decided to wait.
Then at 11:18 a.m. last Wednesday a message dispatched from DonaldJTrump.com asked me to verify that weve spelled YOUR NAME correctly. We want to add YOUR NAME to the Trump Donor Wall.
It was also accompanied by a threat.
You have 1 HOUR.
Yikes!
My record on their 2022 donor wall consisted ofone figure: 0.
This was getting personal.
Boyoboyoboy!
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