After the Times investigation, Trump says fundraising was ‘done legally’

Former President Donald J. Trump responded on Monday The New York Times investigation He revealed that his re-election has paid in more than 10 percent of what he collected online – $ 122 million out of $ 1.2 billion – and that a flood of refunds came after his campaign set up virtually recurring weekly donations to online donors. Shareholders were forced to uncheck a box to unsubscribe, and the fund became increasingly difficult to find as the campaign’s financial struggles increased.

“Our fundraising efforts, working with the Republican Party, have been conducted lawfully,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.

The Times reported that many donors have inadvertently become frequent contributors to Mr. Trump’s campaign due to the pre-defined boxes. Among the victims were retirees, veterans, nurses and political activists. Many have complained to their credit card companies and banks that they have been victims of fraud.

Records show that the Trump process recouped 10.7 percent of what it collected in 2020 on the digital donation processing site WinRed, compared to a 2.2 percent recovery rate for President Biden’s process on the Democratic ActBlue platform.

Mr. Trump, who did not refute any of the numbers in the article, focused on a different number, arguing that his campaign’s “conflict rate” – the number of official credit card complaints – was less than 1 percent of transactions. “Very few,” he said.

This still represents around 200,000 disputed donations, which his campaign previously said added up to $ 19.7 million.

Trump’s campaign has previously refused to say whether the former president was personally aware of the pre-defined fund scheme, and he did not speak about it in his statement. But he did not condemn these tactics.

“Before our campaigns in 2016 and 2020, Republicans were always losing out on small dollar donations,” Trump said in his statement. “Now we’re winning, or doing really well, because we’re the party of working Americans, and we’re beating the Democrats at their own game. We’ve learned from liberal ActBlue – and we’re now better than they are!”