Former president Donald Trump After aggressive fundraising strategies led donors to unknowingly agree to regular donations, the Republican Party has refunded millions of dollars in donations this year.
According to reports, newly released federal records show that Trump, the Republican Party and their joint accounts returned $12.8 million to donors in the first half of 2021. This New York TimesThis figure accounts for about 20% of the $56 million raised by Trump and his committee this year.
In April, the investigation team conducted an investigation. era It was discovered that Trump’s political actions began to choose online donors to automatically make regular donations in September last year under the situation of cash crunch.
The Trump Donor website pre-checks each donor’s weekly donation box, which contains a beautiful interpreter hidden under multiple paragraphs of bold and uppercase text.
Another pre-selection box called the “money bomb” also doubled personal donations.
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Donors must manually uncheck the box to opt-out of weekly withdrawals and money bombs. Since many people don’t know the pre-checked boxes, this strategy resulted in a short-term spike in income, but the donors later demanded refunds and lodged complaints with their credit card providers.
Records show that of the total refunds, $8.1 million came from Trump’s shared bank account with the Republican National Committee (RNC), $2.2 million came from his re-election committee, and $2.5 million came from the Republican Party. era.
“It is clear that the Trump campaign used deception,” Say Peter Logue, director George Washington University Political Communication Ethics Project. “If you have to refund that much money, then you are doing something very wrong or very unethical.”
Among Republican politicians who use WinRed (the Republican fundraising platform supported by RNC), pre-checked recurring donation boxes have become commonplace.
In May, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) unanimously requested Congress Legislation is passed to prohibit the use of pre-checked boxes for regular donations. The state attorneys general of New York, Connecticut, Minnesota and Maryland have also launched investigations into this practice.
Despite the strong opposition, the Trump Political Action Committee continues to use pre-checked boxes.An email seeking a donation on Saturday, see Weekly newspaper, Link to the Save America website, the website pre-checks two boxes, one promises a monthly donation, and the other increases the donation by $50.
Weekly newspaper Contacted a Trump representative for comments. This story will be updated with any response.
