By Prince Hakeem
Former US President Donald J Trump continues to try and remain relevant after his time in office. It appears that his campaign may have paid back some monies to supporters.
According to a new report in the New York Times, the 45th president returned $122.7 million in refunds to his supporters last year. This amount accounts for just 11% of the money the Trump campaign raised. The numbers within the report are verified in a review of Federal Election Commission filings.
Since last summer, the Trump campaign and WinRed have included pre-checked boxes for recurring donation payments. Unfortunately, supporters weren’t made aware that they had to un-check the boxes. Not manually unchecking the boxes in the disclaimer caused contributors’ credit cards to be charged weekly until the election day. Banks soon became bombarded with fraud complaints from Trump supporters who didn’t realize they had agreed to recurring contributions.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller responded to fraud claims, citing internal data in which only .87 percent of transactions flagged as credit card disputes.
“The fact we had a dispute rate of less than 1% of total donations despite raising more grass-roots money than any campaign in history is remarkable,” Miller said.
In comparison to Donald Trump, President Joe Biden and his campaign refunded 2.2 percent of its 2020 donations.
