They say crime doesn’t pay, but a criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump is proving pretty lucrative.
Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign raised $7 million in the three days since a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records on March 30, senior Trump advisor Jason Miller tweeted Tuesday. The Trump campaign is not required to file quarterly federal campaign finance disclosures detailing fundraising for the first three months of 2023 until April 15.
The indictment-fueled fundraising haul dwarfs the $3.8 million his campaign raised from November 15, the day Trump announced his presidential campaign, and the end of 2022. Trump’s campaign raised about $2 million a day since he became the first former or current president to be criminally indicted.
The Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on charges related to his alleged role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who tried to sell her story of an affair with Trump in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election.
“The People of the State of New York allege that Donald J. Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
Trump has denied the affair and pleaded “not guilty” to all charges at his arraignment on Tuesday. Trump’s campaign immediately began fundraising off the charges, which Trump called “an act of obstruction and blatant election interference” on his social media platform Truth Social.
While Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said before the arraignment that the former president would not take a mugshot, his campaign is selling shirts with a fake mugshot for $47. The fake name plate says he’s the 45th and 47th president of the United States and lists his height as 6’5”, taller than his actual height when measured by White House doctors, USA Today reported.
The Trump campaign raised around $774 million during the 2020 presidential election, according to OpenSecrets data. Trump’s joint fundraising committee Save America, his campaign’s main fundraising vehicle, reported raising $151.8 million during the 2022 election cycle.
Save America funnels money to affiliated committees, the Trump campaign and his Save America leadership PAC. From October 20 through November 14, the day before Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign, the Save America joint fundraising committee raised an average of $293,218 per day. Save America fundraising spiked to $854,501 on November 15 and $751,613 on November 16, then dipped back down to $213,609. The joint fundraising committee reported raising $5 million over the month of December, less than the total Miller claims the campaign raised in the three days following Trump’s indictment.
Some of the money coming in could go towards his legal fees. The former president used his leadership PAC to pay $10 million in personal legal fees in 2022, including fees related to this federal indictment, The New York Times reported. That brings the total the leadership PAC spent on legal fees up to $16 million since Trump formed it after the 2020 election.
Senior Data Analyst Brendan Glavin contributed to this report.
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