The felony conviction of the former president served as a catalyst for further funding from donors, which helped his campaign surpass the financial lead that President Joe Biden had worked months to establish.
In the days following his May 30 jury conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying company records, Trump received millions of dollars per hour in grassroots donations.
New campaign finance documents made public on Thursday show that by June 1, Trump’s campaign bank account had surpassed Biden’s $91.6 million to a whopping $1166.6 million.
In the annals of political funding, that check ranks among the biggest single gifts ever made public.The rise completed a startlingly rapid turnaround for Trump, who had fallen behind by almost $40 million in this crucial indicator just two months before.
The information released on Thursday was only a small portion of a larger picture of campaign finance that will remain unknown for months, but it is indicative of Trump’s strong ability to raise money from both billionaires and small-dollar contributors.
This Monday, a second rich supporter surfaced: the New York Times revealed that the day after the conviction was revealed, banking heir Timothy Mellon gave $50 million to a super-PAC backing Trump.
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In the immediate wake of the verdict, several affluent contributors, most notably Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire, had already disclosed their contributions to Trump.
In May, Trump and the Republican National Committee raised a total of $141 million, surpassing Biden and the Democratic National Committee’s total of $81 million.
New evidence of billionaire support
Given that the election legislation only permits individuals to donate a maximum of $3,300 to each candidate per election, a significant portion of the success of Trump’s official campaign this week can be attributed to a rise in grassroots contributions.
However, the primary driver of Trump’s total fundraising boom has been his campaign’s ability to secure contributions from billionaires for both official campaign checks and unrestricted funds for organizations connected to him. There are totals that won’t be accessible for several weeks or months.
Apart from the staggering contribution made by Mellon, who is the grandson of former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and descended from a Pittsburgh banking dynasty during the Gilded Age, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss disclosed on Thursday that they had each contributed $1 million to Trump’s campaign.
The investors in cryptocurrencies claimed that the money was used to oppose what Cameron referred to as “the Biden Administration’s war on crypto.”
The twins included a photo of themselves that was presumably shot at a Trump Silicon Valley fundraiser earlier this month that raised $12 million in a single night, so that donation will probably appear on future election filings.
The dinner, which culminated a wave of recent Trump incursions into the wallets of affluent donors from the tech, cryptocurrency, and Wall Street sectors, was co-hosted by billionaire investor David O. Sacks and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.
Additionally, President Biden’s campaign kept raising money; in May, it raised more money than it did in April, albeit it was still less than that of Trump. According to Biden’s team, the money has been used more wisely on campaign infrastructure, which will reduce the amount of cash on hand.
Additionally, they insist that, in the words of campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, they have a “strong and consistent fundraising program.”
This week, Biden also disclosed the identity of a new billionaire fundraiser. In 2020, Biden’s 2020 challenger for the presidency, Michael Bloomberg, gave him $20 million.
As per the Washington Post, the donation was divided into two parts: $19 million went to a super-PAC supporting Biden, and another $1 million was given to a different Biden organization.