Donald Trump’s campaign claimed Friday that it had raised more than $34 million immediately following Thursday night’s announcement of his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The massive fundraising comes the morning after a jury found the former president guilty in a criminal hush money case filed in a Manhattan court. Shortly after the verdict was announced, the campaign set out to turn its political misfortune into cash, sending out a flurry of fundraising emails, social media posts and text messages.
“I was just found guilty of a rigged witch hunt impeachment trial: I DID NOTHING WRONG,” the campaign’s first email read.
Republican lawmakers including JD Vance, Eli Crane and House Speaker Mike Johnson linked to the campaign’s donation page on WinRed. The campaign even went so far as to warn opposing candidates not to fundraise for themselves in the wake of Trump’s verdict. according to Politico. According to the campaign, the dramatic increase in donation traffic to Trump’s joint fundraising committee led to the site’s shutdown. The joint committee shares some of its funds with the Republican National Committee.
“So many Americans were motivated to donate to President Trump’s campaign that the WinRed pages went down,” the Trump campaign wrote. in an X post on Thursday. “We are working to get the website back online as quickly as possible.”
WinRed did not respond to WIRED’s requests to confirm why the platform went offline. The site was back online about an hour after it went down.
Larger donations also began arriving Thursday night from Silicon Valley’s top tech investors. Shaun Maguire, an investor at Sequoia Capital, published a lengthy letter on X announcing that he would donate $300,000 to the Trump campaign. Maguire declined to identify other donors who are also considering supporting Trump.
“There are many investors doing similar things, but I can’t rule them out,” Maguire told WIRED in an email Thursday.
David Sacks, a venture capitalist who will host a fundraiser for Trump next month, shared Maguire’s sentiment, suggesting that Silicon Valley’s wealthiest donors were beginning to shift their support to Trump.
“After Biden’s disastrous presidency, Trump has many followers in Silicon Valley; many are simply afraid to admit it,” Sacks said in an X post responding to Maguire Thursday. “But with every act of bravery, like this one, the dam begins to break.”
The influx of cash was not entirely surprising. Hours after Trump surrendered to the Fulton County Jail last August in a separate case, his campaign raised more than 7 million dollars in donations. He also issued new merchandise, such as T-shirts and mugs, featuring Trump’s mug shot.
Meanwhile, a Trump memecoin, in which the former president reportedly has important stakes—reached an all-time high in value after initially falling on news of the verdict.
Far-right provocateurs and their followers referred to Thursday’s verdict as a declaration of war online, demonstrating that the case would not hinder their support for the former president.
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention.
“President Trump and our campaign are immensely grateful for this outpouring of support from patriots across our country. “President Trump is fighting to save our nation and November 5 is the day Americans will deliver the true verdict,” Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, senior advisers to the Trump campaign, said in a statement on Friday.
