The former president’s fund-raising slowed significantly after the Electoral College delivered its votes to make Joseph R. Biden Jr. the 46th president.
President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party raised $255.4 million in the eight-plus weeks following the Nov. 3 election, new federal filings show, as he sought to undermine and overturn the results with unfounded accusations of fraud.
Mr. Trump’s strongest fund-raising came in the immediate aftermath of the election, such as after major media organizations declared that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won on Nov. 7. But even as Mr. Trump and his legal team lost case after case — in venues including the Supreme Court — his donors continued to give repeatedly. More than two million contributions flowed in to Mr. Trump, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts from Nov. 24 through the end of the year.
The donations were made public over the weekend in a Federal Election Commission filing by WinRed, the digital platform that Republicans use to process online donations. Mr. Trump’s campaign committee, joint committees with the R.N.C., and the new political action committee he formed after the election, Save America, will all file additional disclosures on Sunday with more details on spending and fund-raising.
Mr. Trump had previously announced that he and the R.N.C. had raised $207.5 million in the first month following the election. The new records show that his fund-raising fell sharply in December compared with November, with an especially notably dip after Dec. 14, the day the Electoral College formally cast its ballots to make Mr. Biden the nation’s 46th president, and reality may have set in for some of Mr. Trump’s supporters about the futility of the efforts to overturn the result.
In the two weeks leading up to the Electoral College vote, Mr. Trump and the R.N.C. had raised an average of $2.9 million every day online; in the two weeks after, the average was $1.2 million.
In fact, Mr. Trump and the R.N.C. had raised more than $2 million online every day since the election until Dec. 14. They did not raise that much again for the rest of the year, until Dec. 31, when donations spiked at the end-of-year deadline.
The new figures capture almost all of Mr. Trump’s online fund-raising, as he stopped raising money on Jan. 6, the day on which he addressed a mob of supporters who then stormed the Capitol in a violent riot and on which Mr. Biden was formally ratified by Congress as the next president.
Following that riot, Mr. Trump essentially ceased sending fund-raising pitches to his supporters (the R.N.C. paused for about a week). His last campaign email that day began, “TODAY will be a historic day in our Nation’s history.”
Still, Mr. Trump left office with tens of millions of dollars raised for his new Save America PAC, which he can use to fund a post-presidential political operation, including travel and staffing.
But Mr. Trump still faces a wave of legal costs with a looming impeachment trial in the Senate set to begin in a little more than a week. Late on Saturday, Mr. Trump abruptly parted ways with the lead lawyer, Butch Bowers, on his impeachment defense.
In his first impeachment, the R.N.C. shouldered some of the legal expenses for Mr. Trump because he was the sitting president and the party leader. Those costs included a $196,000 payment to Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer who served as part of Mr. Trump’s defense team.
It is not clear what role the R.N.C. will play in the upcoming impeachment but the party’s coffers did benefit immensely from Mr. Trump’s aggressive fund-raising as he spread conspiracy theories about voting fraud. Some 25 percent of funds raised through Mr. Trump’s email and texting operation were earmarked for the R.N.C.
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January 31, 2021 at 06:00PM
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Trump Raised $255.4 Million in 8 Weeks as He Sought to Overturn Election Result - The New York Times
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