Donald Trump has raised over $70 million in small campaign contributions since the guilty verdict– a record for any 24-hour period for any candidate in history!
As his legal team strategizes about appeals for what he has called a “scam verdict,” Trump’s fundraising is off the charts. The campaign says it raised $52.8 million after a Manhattan jury delivered a guilty verdict in his hush-money trial, highlighting how the verdict has energized rather than alienated his supporters. Since then reports say the total is over $70 million.
The campaign said that the unprecedented sum mostly came from small-dollar donors, including 30% who were new contributors to WinRed, the GOP’s fundraising platform.
While the level of contributions since the guilty verdict is monumental, the Trump campaign has continuously benefited financially from his legal woes. The former president’s fundraising also spiked when he was indicted by federal grand juries in Florida in June 2023 and Washington, DC, in August 2023. He likewise saw a bump when a different judge in New York ordered him to pay $454 million in fines and interest in his civil fraud case in February.
Formulating Appeal
Meanwhile, as the money pours in, Trump and his legal team are hard at work formulating their appeal strategy. Mere hours after he was found guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, his legal team vowed to appeal.
Trump’s lead defense attorney, Todd Blanche, said on CNN that the appeal of the convictions would be filed “as soon as we can.” Blanche also told NBC’s Today that they “expect to win on appeal.”
Trump himself spoke to reporters earlier that day from Trump Tower in New York, asserting, “This is a scam. There’s a rigged trial. It shouldn’t have been in that venue. We shouldn’t have had that judge.”
Even some top Democrats have sided with Trump that his trial was a politically motivated scam. In an interview soon after the verdict with NYC’s WABC radio, former NY Democratic Governor David Paterson said that he ” agreed with Trump’s gripes that the case was “rigged.
“There are a lot … of erroneous qualities to that trial,” Paterson said. “Some of the people who are involved: A person who worked at the White House somehow wound up in the Manhattan DA’s Office. All of it, when it adds up, really looks very much like what the former president describes it as,” the top Dem told talk radio host John Catsimatidis.