Trump Campaign Reportedly Maneuvered One-Time Donors Into Recurring Contributions, Prompting Wave of Fraud Complaints
A new report indicates that former President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign led donors into giving them recurring donations while it faced a significant cash shortage during the 2020 election.
The New York Times published an investigative report on Saturday that looks into a wave of complaints Trump supporters made to financial institutions throughout the 2020 election. The report says that after the Trump campaign lost their cash advantage and got broadly outspent by the Joe Biden campaign, they turned to a pro-GOP fundraising platform, WinRed, and set up a new online donation system that made repetitive donations the default option for their virtual fundraising.
Trump supporters were reportedly presented with a disclaimer when they were about to make a donation, and they had to uncheck a box that primed them to give monthly donations. This was described as an “intentional scheme to boost revenues” that was wrapped up in the fine-print of the disclaimer.
As the election got closer though, the campaign and the Republican National Convention reportedly started including more pre-checked provisions that set donors up to make more addition payments, rather than one-time donations. Internal campaign communications reportedly referred to these contributions as the “money bomb.”
The Times piece includes several pictures of the convoluted campaign donation boxes that the Trump campaign would repeatedly modify throughout the election. These set supporters up to make weekly payments or payments that would be authorized at later stages of the contest.
The report also heard from several Trump supporters who thought there were making one-time donations, but learned later to their shock that they were shelling out thousands of extra dollars to the campaign. This prompted a surge of fraud complaints to banks and credit card companies, and the Trump campaign has issued $122.7 million in total refunds following the election.
“The fact we had a dispute rate of less than 1 percent of total donations despite raising more grass-roots money than any campaign in history is remarkable,” said Trump spokesman Jason Miller as he downplayed allegations of fraud. “Our campaign was built by the hardworking men and women of America, and cherishing their investments was paramount to anything else we did.”
The report also notes that Trump and the RNC recently had a dispute over their mutual fundraising. While RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has insisted that their relationship with Trump is fine, the former president has demanded that the RNC stop using his using his name and likeness for fundraising, plus he told people to donate to his Save America PAC instead of giving money to the “RINOs.”
