Federal records reveal that Donald Trump and the Republicans have refunded an excess of $135 million to their supporters for deceptive fund-raising practices in the 2020 election cycle.
According to the NY Times, for the first half of 2021, Trump has refunded $12.8 million to his supporters who complained about fraud.
Trump’s main tactic in fleecing money is to have an automatic weekly recurring contribution checkbox pre-checked on donation forms which his supporters didn’t notice.
From NY Times:
The aggressive fund-raising tactics that former President Donald J. Trump deployed late in last year’s presidential campaign have continued to spur an avalanche of refunds into 2021, with Mr. Trump, the Republican Party and their shared accounts returning $12.8 million to donors in the first six months of the year, newly released federal records show.
New Federal Election Commission records from Wined, the Republican donation-processing site, show the full scale of the financial impact. All told, 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 $12.8 million Donald Trump refunded this year is around 20% of the $56 million he has raised in 2021. That’s a huge number of refunds!
This is full-scale grift from a major party in the United States. No wonder COVID-19 is out of control in Republican-dominated states. They are sheep following bad advice opening their wallets mindlessly.