Former President Donald Trump’s campaign announced that it had a major fundraising haul 24 hours after Trump was convicted in a Manhattan trial.
A 12 person jury in Manhattan convicted Trump on Thursday on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the case brought by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The former president’s campaign donation site crashed following the decision and displayed a 500 error stating “something went wrong.” Just about 24 hours after the conviction, the Trump campaign posted on Twitter that it had raised $54.8 million.
“Biden and his Democrat allies have turned our legal system into a political tool, and Americans from every corner of the country have had enough,” Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers to the campaign, said in a press release. “This momentum is just getting started and together, as President Trump stated perfectly, Americans will render the real verdict November 5th.”
JUST IN pic.twitter.com/YHidOAVwHA
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) May 31, 2024
Friday morning, the campaign announced that it had raised nearly $35 million from small-donor donations.
“President Trump and our campaign are immensely grateful from this outpouring of support from patriots across our country. President Trump is fighting to save our nation and November 5th is the day Americans will deliver the real verdict,” LaCivita and Wiles said in an earlier Friday statement.
Trump’s conviction centered around charges regarding $420,000 that Trump paid his former attorney, Michael Cohen. Trump paid the charges across 12 months in 2017 and listed them as “legal services.” Prosecutors argued during the spring trial that Trump’s “legal services” payments were actually an effort to secure a nondisclosure agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with the former president ahead of the 2016 election.
The jury convicted Trump on Thursday after Merchan gave them instructions saying that they did not need to agree on what “unlawful” means Trump allegedly used to influence the election. The judge previously faced criticism in April 2023 after it was found that he donated $35 to Democrats ahead of the 2020 election, CNN reported. Merchan donated $15 to President Joe Biden, who was challenging Trump for the White House at the time, the outlet reported.
After remaining silent on the decision, Biden addressed the trial ahead of his unplanned remarks on the Middle East. The president backed up the jury’s decision and responded to complaints from Trump that the trial was “rigged.” (RELATED: Daily Caller’s ‘Rigged’ Reveals Radical Steps Democrats Have Taken To Undermine Elections)
“It’s reckless, dangerous. It’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict,” Biden said.
“Our justice system has endured for nearly two hundred and fifty years, and it literally is a cornerstone of America. Our justice system. The justice system should be respected and we should never allow anyone to tear it down. It’s as simple as that. That’s America. That’s who we are. And that’s who we will always be, God willing,” the president added.
