Former President Donald Trump’s campaign says it raised a whopping $34.8 million in small dollar donations after he was convicted Thursday on 34 felony counts in Manhattan.
The campaign said the Thursday haul was “the biggest day ever recorded” for Trump’s vaunted small-dollar fundraising operation on the WinRed platform, nearly doubling the previous high. The WinRed website temporarily crashed from the overwhelming traffic.
In a statement Friday morning, senior campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said that within minutes of the verdict “our digital fundraising system was overwhelmed with support, and despite temporary delays online because of the amount of traffic, President Trump raised $34.8 million dollars from small dollar donors.”
“Not only was the amount historic, but 29.7% of yesterday’s donor’s were brand new donors to the WinRed platform,” the statement added.
Trump was found guilty in New York state court of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star to conceal an alleged affair. He was found to have done so to hide another crime, such as a campaign finance law violation or a tax code violation, making the charges felonies. He will be sentenced on July 11 and he could face probation, community service or a short jail stint.
An aggressive Trump campaign effort to capitalize on the conviction
Trump’s campaign texted supporters at least five times asking them to donate and sharing a link to a WinRed page that called Trump a “political prisoner,” framed his conviction as a “witch hunt,” and included a copy of his mugshot from an unrelated case in Atlanta, Georgia. The page asked 10 million people to donate.
Additionally, dozens of Trump’s allies shared the same link to the WinRed page on X, formerly known as Twitter. They include Republican Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama, Marco Rubio of Florida, J.D. Vance of Ohio, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York, Byron Donalds of Florida and Steve Scalise of Louisiana also shared.
More: ‘Speechless’: Swing state voters react to Donald Trump’s guilty verdict
Trump’s campaign wrote on Truth Social less than an hour after the verdict was announced, “So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump’s campaign that the WinRed pages went down. “We are working on getting the website back online as quickly as possible.”
USA TODAY’s inquiry to WinRed was not immediately returned.
Small-dollar donations often can be a measure of grassroots enthusiasm for a candidate. In Trump’s case, they have been a barometer for how the GOP base is responding to his legal troubles.
Trump has used each of his four criminal indictments to raise money, but his first conviction gave his fundraising a bigger boost.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump’s campaign announces $34.8 million in donations after verdict
