The Trump campaign hopes the ruling will force small donors to donate more money. (File)
Donald Trump is trying to turn his criminal conviction into gold by appealing to donors to contribute money to his recent presidential campaign.
The appeal, which refers to Trump as a “political prisoner,” was posted online just minutes after a jury found him guilty on all 34 charges in a case that dealt with the misuse of business records to cover up secret money payments to an adult film. actress.
“They broke into my house, arrested me, took my photo and now they have just convicted me!” says one fundraising appeal. “Before the day is over, I am calling on TEN MILLION pro-Trump patriots to contribute.”
WinRed, the website the Republican Party uses to collect online donations, was sometimes displaying error messages Thursday night, with some pages that Trump uses to appeal to donors telling visitors that the site was undergoing maintenance. A representative for WinRed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump campaign hopes the ruling will force small donors to donate more money. Some of Trump’s biggest online fundraising days have fed into his legal troubles, including raising $15.4 million in the days following his indictment on money-hiding charges.
President Joe Biden’s campaign is also employing the same strategy, posting on X, the site formerly known as Twitter: “There’s only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the polls.
Trump’s campaign reported raising millions after the former president was indicted on charges related to mishandling classified materials and following his arrest in Georgia for efforts to overturn the 2020 election, when a widely circulated photo was taken in the Trump prison. Fulton County.
What is less clear is how wealthy donors and business interests will react to the verdict. The campaign worked to increase fundraising with mega-donors in April and May, seeking to raise money before a jury decision that could dissuade deep-pocketed donors from contributing, according to a person familiar with the campaign’s thinking.
Donor Decisions
Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, which has backed several of Elon Musk’s companies, said he would donate $300,000 to Trump after the verdict.
“The timing is not a coincidence,” Maguire wrote in a post on X, Musk’s social network. “The media will likely demonize me, as they have done so many others before me,” he wrote. “But despite that, I still believe it’s the right thing to do.” The sentiment was praised by Trump donor David Sacks, another venture capitalist, who is holding a fundraiser for the former president at his San Francisco home in June.
Trump’s fundraising operation has scored several victories in recent weeks, including raising $76 million in April, $25 million more than Biden raised that month. He also won the support of billionaire Miriam Adelson and Blackstone Inc. CEO Steve Schwarzman, two of the biggest Republican donors. Trump also raised $40 million during an upset in Texas, much of which came from oil and gas industry executives, including Continental Resources Inc. President Harold Hamm.
Trump is also turning to donors to fund his ongoing legal projects. He faces three other criminal charges, but they have not yet been scheduled for trial.
Donors who write large checks also have $5,000 of their contributions going to Save America, a political action committee that has been paying Trump’s legal bills, with the remainder split between Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee – which has a dedicated legal account that he could access. pay their lawyers – and the state parties.
Another entity, the Patriot Legal Defense Fund, was created in 2023 to pay legal bills incurred by former campaign and administration officials involved in Trump’s lawsuits. He is raising money through a GoFundMe page created in response to the New York State civil fraud case that resulted in a judgment against him totaling $454 million.
The Patriot Legal Defense Fund raised about $2 million through its GoFundMe page, created by Elena Cardone, a Trump supporter and businesswoman, after the ruling was issued in February. There have been 33,900 contributions so far, with donors being promised that all the money will be used in the event of civil fraud.
“President Trump is facing an unprecedented weaponization of our nation’s legal system,” Cardone and her husband, businessman Grant Cardone, said in a statement, adding that the GoFundMe will continue to raise money to support him. The fund did not respond to a request for comment.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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