FEC Recommends Ban on Shady Fundraising Tactic Used by Trump: ‘Almost Like Theft’

(pool photo via Getty by Pete Marovich for The New York Times)

After a New York Times investigation highlighted how former President Donald Trump’s campaign used a shady fundraising tactic — prechecked recurring donation boxes — the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has taken a rare unanimous vote to recommend to Congress that they pass a law banning the practice.

As the Times reported back in early April, during the 2020 election, Trump’s campaign found itself at a cash disadvantage with now-President Joe Biden, and started sending out online fundraising solicitations that made repetitive donations the default option. Some of these were set up to authorize additional donations later in the campaign, some for monthly or even weekly recurring donations. The campaign also sometimes used prechecked boxes to double the donation and made the language and disclaimers complex and confusing.

The Times interviewed multiple Trump donors who thought they were making one-time contributions and were shocked to discover thousands of extra dollars being sent to the campaign, sometimes overdrawing their bank accounts. Unhappy donors made so many fraud complaints to their banks and credit card companies that the Trump campaign issued $122.7 million in total refunds, or 10.7 percent of their total donations through the WinRed online platform, a number far above the norm for a presidential campaign.

As a comparison, Biden’s campaign refunded 2.2 percent of the donations made through ActBlue, the Democrats’ online fundraising platform.

The NRCC was criticized for employing a similar fundraising scheme.

The FEC reviewed the issue and voted unanimously, 6-0, to recommend to Congress that they pass a law banning this type of pre-selected repetitive donation. The FEC is evenly split, with 3 Republican appointees and 3 Democrats, and had spent most of the recent years gridlocked on partisan lines. Regarding this specific fundraising tactic, however, the six were all on the same page — including the three Republican commissioners appointed by Trump himself.

As the Times‘ Shane Goldmacher noted, the FEC does not have the legal power to ban the tactic on their own, so they are sending this request to Congress to recommend they pass a law.

Ellen Weintraub, a long-serving Democratic FEC commissioner, said that it was important for donors to “be able to exercise their choices freely,” but “[i]f their money is being taken from them because of some reverse checkoff option they didn’t notice, then they are not giving their money freely.”

“It’s almost like theft,” she said. “I don’t want to see donors tricked.”

The FEC isn’t the only one taking a sharp look at this fundraising practice. Facebook spokesman Andy Stone confirmed to the Times that prechecked recurring donation pages did not violate Facebook’s rules for political fundraising but added, “we’re taking a close look at how this fund-raising practice is used on our platform to ensure that we protect the people using our services.”