Trump’s postconviction fundraising surge wipes out cash deficit

Former President Trump’s campaign has largely erased a significant cash deficit compared to President Biden’s reelection campaign, thanks to an enormous surge in donations over the past two months during and immediately after Trump’s New York City criminal trial.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports filed late Thursday showed the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee (RNC) had a combined $171 million on hand, while the Biden campaign and Democratic National Committee (DNC) had a combined $157 million on hand.

A fuller accounting of the campaigns’ spending won’t be available until next month, when joint fundraising committees file their reports with the FEC. And the Biden campaign has touted its use of campaign funds to build infrastructure in battleground states while questioning how much Trump is spending on legal fees.

But Trump’s campaign easily outraised Biden’s in the months of April and May as the former president was mostly confined to a Manhattan courtroom, helping to erase what had been a sizable fundraising deficit.

Trump’s campaign and the RNC raised $76 million in April compared to the Biden campaign and DNC haul of $51 million for that month. The gap was even wider in May, when the Trump campaign raised $141 million, outpacing the Biden campaign’s $85 million haul. 

The Trump campaign said it brought in $53 million via online donations in the 24 hours after a jury found the former president guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records during his 2016 campaign to conceal alleged affairs.

In addition, federal filings showed billionaire Timothy Mellon donated $50 million to a pro-Trump super PAC the day after Trump’s guilty verdict. Mellon had previously donated millions to a super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The huge cash surge could allow Trump to invest in voter outreach in pivotal swing states. The main super PAC supporting his bid has already announced it plans to spend $100 million in paid media through Labor Day, with a particular focus on four key battleground states.

The Biden campaign has raised more than any other Democratic presidential campaign in history through this point in the cycle, and it has enjoyed a cash advantage over Trump since the 2024 race began.

Its fundraising numbers released Thursday do not account for the $30 million raised at a Hollywood fundraiser last weekend with former President Obama, Jimmy Kimmel, George Clooney and Julia Roberts, among others, nor does it include the roughly $20 million former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave to pro-Biden groups.

The Biden campaign’s massive funding to date has allowed it to spend on multimillion-dollar ad campaigns, staff up in pivotal battleground states and specifically target voters in key demographics.

“The money we continue to raise matters, and it’s helping the campaign build out an operation that invests in reaching and winning the voters who will decide this election – a stark contrast to Trump’s PR stunts and photo-ops that he’s pretending is a campaign,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. “From person-to-person organizing to a historic paid media campaign, we’re doing the work to reach and earn the votes needed to win in November.”