Trump Forced To Return Donor Cash After Phony Scheme Uncovered

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Throughout the first six months of this year, former President Donald Trump, the Republican National Committee, and the accounts shared by both interests have refunded a whopping total of some $12.8 million to donors, showing the broad impact from previously revealed deceptive fundraising tactics. Trump and the GOP have used pre-checked boxes on their fundraising forms that — unless un-checked by the donor — set up automatic future donations. These boxes come in two main forms, apparently, with one setting up a recurring donation and another establishing a future one-time donation. Large numbers of GOP donors have seemingly been affected by these schemes, leading to numerous refund requests.

On fundraising forms, Republicans often placed the explanation of what the pre-checked boxes would actually do at the end of eight or nine lines of text, making it even easier for additional donations to get set up without the knowledge of the individuals whose money would be withdrawn. As The New York Times put it, these “refunded donations amounted to an unwitting interest-free loan from Mr. Trump’s supporters in the weeks when he most needed it.” It’s a grift, with Trump’s own supporters as those getting duped by the former president.

As concern has spread, there have been efforts to thwart the usage of these pre-checked boxes on fundraising forms. Bills that would ban the tactic have been introduced in the House and Senate, while attorney generals in four states have started investigations into the procedures of online fundraising hubs WinRed and ActBlue, which serve Republican and Democratic interests, respectively — although Democratic refunds are substantially lower and Democrats have “moved to stop using [pre-checked] boxes entirely,” the Times notes.

Overall, “more than $135 million was refunded to donors by Mr. Trump, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts in the 2020 cycle through June 2021 — including roughly $60 million after Election Day,” the Times explains, and this staggering volume of refunds to campaign donors obviously indicates a problem. As Peter Loge, who serves as the director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University, put it to the Times: “It’s pretty clear that the Trump campaign was engaging in deceptive tactics… If you have to return that much money you are doing something either very wrong or very unethical.”