Former President Donald Trump’s felony conviction was a springboard for more cash from donors and allowed his campaign to overtake a cash advantage President Joe Biden spent months building.
After a jury found him guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30, Trump saw a massive surge in grass-roots donations in the days that followed, taking in millions of dollars an hour.
By June 1, according to new campaign finance filings released Thursday, Trump's campaign bank account had ballooned to $116.6 million and overtaken Biden’s $91.6 million.
The surge capped a remarkably quick turnabout for Trump, who had trailed in this critical metric by more than $40 million just two months prior.
Thursday’s release was just one piece of a fuller campaign finance picture that won't be known for months but is emblematic of Trump’s potent fundraising power among both small-dollar donors and billionaires.
Another wealthy backer emerged this week, with the New York Times reporting that banking heir Timothy Mellon donated $50 million to a super-PAC supporting Trump one day after the conviction was announced.
That check is among the largest single gifts ever disclosed in campaign finance history.
Other wealthy donors, notably Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire, had previously announced Trump donations in the immediate aftermath of the verdict.
In total, Trump and the Republican National Committee raised $141 million in May to beat a total of $81 million raised by Biden and the DNC.
New evidence of billionaire support
The election law only allows individuals to give a maximum of $3,300 to each candidate per election, meaning that this week’s powerful result for Trump’s formal campaign was largely due to a surge in grass-roots donations.
But Trump's overall fundraiser surge has been due to his campaign's ability to tap billionaires for both formal campaign checks and money for Trump-affiliated groups that can accept unlimited amounts. Some of those totals will not be available for weeks or months.
In addition to the eye-popping donation from Mellon — the grandson of former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and a member of a family that created a Pittsburgh banking dynasty during the Gilded Age — Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss announced Thursday that they had each given $1 million to Trump’s campaign.
The cryptocurrency investors said those funds were to protest what Cameron called "the Biden Administration's war on crypto."
That donation will likely show up on future election filings as the twins attached a picture of themselves apparently taken at a Trump Silicon Valley fundraiser earlier this month that garnered a reported $12 million in a single night.
The event was co-hosted by billionaire investor David O. Sacks and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya and capped a wave of recent Trump inroads into the pocketbooks of wealthy donors from the worlds of tech, crypto, and Wall Street.
President Biden’s campaign also continued to rake in dollars, with a fundraising total in May that outpaced the April numbers but still lagged Trump's.
Biden’s team said it has been spending its money more effectively on campaign infrastructure, a move that would drain the cash-on-hand figure.
They also maintain that they have a "strong and consistent fundraising program," as campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez put it in a statement.
Biden also revealed his own new billionaire donor this week. Michael Bloomberg, the onetime Biden presidential rival back in 2020, sent $20 million Biden's way.
The donation, according to the Washington Post, was split between $19 million to a pro-Biden super-PAC and another $1 million to another Biden group.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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