How Did Trump Raise $250M for a Fund That Did Not Even Exist?

The recent presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump raised $250 million from supporters as he told them the money would be used to fight voter fraud.

However, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack claimed on Monday, June 13, 2022, that the campaign knew those claims of fraud were fake and instead transferred the money to Trump’s own political organization.

Donald Trump’s campaign sent millions of fundraising emails urging supporters to donate and help fight voter fraud between election day and January 6, the committee said.

Many of those emails asked supporters to subscribe and donate to "The Official Election Defense Fund" for cases related to the election.

 

It Did Not Exist

Former President Donald Trump and his hard-line allies collected $250 million claiming the 2020 election was stolen.

However, the House select committee probing last year’s Capitol riot revealed Monday, June 13, that most of the funds were put in the newly created Save America PAC rather than paying the various challenges to Joe Biden’s victory.

Amanda Wick, the panel’s senior investigative counsel, said in a video presentation that the 45th president’s campaign “knew these claims of voter fraud were false, yet they continued to barrage small dollar donors with emails,” adding that the campaign encouraged the supporters to fight voter fraud that did not exist.

According to Wick, just in the first week after Election Day, more than $100 million alone was collected.

However, “the select committee discovered no such fund existed…most of the funds went toward [Trump’s] newly created Save America PAC rather than to pay for various challenges to Joe Biden’s victory,” The New York Post has found.

Senior investigative counsel for the House committee, Amanda Wick said: “The evidence developed by the Select Committee highlights how the Trump campaign aggressively pushed false election claims to fundraise, telling supporters it would be used to fight voter fraud that did not exist.”

“The Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false, yet they continued to barrage small dollar donors with emails, encouraging them to donate to something called "The Official Election Defense Fund." The select committee discovered no such fund existed,” she added.

 

 

 

‘The Big Rip-off’

“Not only was there the Big Lie, there was the Big Ripoff,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) near the end of the January 6 committee’s second hearing in explaining how Donald Trump's campaign took money from supporters following false allegations of election fraud.

Former Trump advisers and Justice Department officials said they explicitly told the ex-president that there was no election corruption.

Despite that, Trump continued his allegations that the election was stolen, accusations that according to the lawmakers on the panel were behind the Capitol riots, as Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building in an effort to prevent Joe Biden from the certification of his victory.

Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren said: “Mr. Trump’s election fraud claims were false. Mr. Trump’s closest advisers knew it. Mr. Trump knew it.”

“That didn’t stop him from pushing the false claims and urging his supporters to ‘fight like hell’, to ‘take back their country’ after he lost the election,” he added.

Lofgren, leading the hearing, later told CNN: “[Trump] intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist, and used the money raised for something other than what it said.”

According to The Guardian, the Trump campaign was able to continue until January 6, as the American former president did not stop his frivolous election litigation past called the “safe harbor deadline.”

 

The Second Hearing

The select committee revealed at the second hearing, a new piece of information about Trump falsely declaring victory on election night at the White House at the insistence of his attorney Rudy Giuliani, but against the advice of every other presidential adviser, The Guardian reported.

Mr. Trump had infamously claimed on election night that “frankly, we did win this election” despite that none of the competitors had yet been announced as a winner, even “a number of the most closely contested states were still counting millions of mail-in ballots,” according to the same source.

On Tuesday, June 14, the select committee played a video of the top Trump White House aide Jason Miller testifying that Giuliani recommended to Trump they just pretend that they had won.

However, without the video, Trump declaring victory on election night would not be exactly clear.

“They’re stealing it from us,” Giuliani told Donald Trump when he found him at the White House, according to Miller, who also said that the former New York mayor seemed drunk.

“Where do all the votes come from? We need to go say that we won.”