The Trump campaign capitalized on fears of a stolen election, raising millions of dollars by misleading donors with claims of voter fraud that campaign officials privately conceded were not true.
Claims of election fraud were used in millions of fundraising emails sent to supporters in the weeks following the 2020 election, according to evidence uncovered by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol. The campaign raised $250 million from its efforts, with $100 million flooding in during the week directly following the election.
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“Throughout the committee’s investigation, we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled voters as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said during the committee’s hearing on Monday. “So not only was there the big lie — there was the big rip-off.”
In the emails, the Trump campaign urged supporters to donate money in order to “fight back” the “left-wing mob.” Millions of people received these advertisements between Election Day and Jan. 6, 2021, according to testimony from senior investigative counsel Amanda Wick.
Although they publicly supported the former president’s claims of a stolen election at the time, several White House and campaign advisers had told former President Donald Trump that he lost the election and that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, several officials conceded in video testimony.
The emails urged supporters to contribute to litigating the 2020 election through the so-called Election Defense Fund, which two former Trump campaign aides testified did not exist. Instead, it was merely a marketing tactic, and the money did not go toward those efforts, they said.
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Rather, much of the funds went toward creating the Save America PAC and was used to send millions of dollars to Trump allies and former White House officials, Wick said.
The testimony is part of the House committee’s efforts to tie Trump’s claims of voter fraud and a stolen election to the violence that ensued at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The House panel will continue to detail its findings over the coming weeks, with its next hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
