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In the dishonest business that is politics, perhaps nothing is as dishonest as its lifeblood: fundraising.
Fundraising emails are routinely, utterly misleading. They’ll often refer to being just this close to an undeclared fundraising goal. They’ll promise a donation “match” in ways that make no sense. And increasingly, they’ll try to dupe donors into unwittingly making recurring donations instead of just one. Donald Trump’s political operation put that last one on the map.
Now the question before special counsel Jack Smith, apparently, is whether dishonest fundraising in a dishonest effort to overturn the 2020 election might also be fraudulent.
The Washington Post broke the news late Wednesday that Smith had zeroed in on Trump’s fundraising practices while Trump was contesting the 2020 election results. An aggressive strategy resulted in a windfall of $250 million. The House Jan. 6 committee noted that little of it was actually used on contesting the election results and instead enriched Trump’s political operation. Smith appears focused on whether the appeals violated wire fraud laws, which bar making false representations over email to deceive people into sending money.
As with many such questions (including Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News), this one appears to boil down to whether Trump and those around him knew better. That is, whether they understood the claims they were making in the emails were false or dubious and made them anyway.
Given the standard set by political fundraising emails, it would seem a difficult line to draw. But it’s worth a review of what we know.
The first thing to note is that the Jan. 6 committee has touched on this, somewhat. The committee, in its December final report, devoted an appendix to Trump’s fundraising, titled “The Big Rip-Off” (to go with “The Big Lie”). It detailed some internal discomfort with some of the claims that were being made in the emails and the lack of a review process.
Among the findings from the report:
- In one case, it said a staffer for the Republican National Committee (which had a joint fundraising operation with Trump) acknowledged that claims that Democrats were trying to “steal” the election weren’t based on actual evidence of voter fraud, and that he took questions about the stolen-election claims to the RNC’s legal team.
- At another point, the report says an RNC vendor edited copy that he labeled “threatening.” The vendor added that it “obviously insinuates the so far unsubstantiated theory of voter fraud, as well as contributions and legal actions will result in some sort of different outcome.”
- The RNC’s chief copywriter said the RNC’s legal team at one point offered guidance not to use the term “rigged.”
- An RNC copywriter told the Jan. 6 committee that he refused to write an email shortly after Election Day falsely claiming that Trump won Pennsylvania. The copywriter was fired weeks later.
- The report also says that a lawyer for the RNC, Justin Reimer, changed language to eliminate direct claims that Joe Biden lost that election and that Trump won “by a lot.”
A review of the actual emails shows much of the language in them merely insinuated that the election was being stolen without directly saying so, or it cited purported evidence to that effect. But sometimes it went beyond that.
Despite the change by Reimer on Nov. 11, 2020, emails went out on Nov. 16 and 17 stating that Biden had lost “by a lot.” A Nov. 21 email used the subject line: “Biden did NOT win.”
Despite the copywriter’s objection about the Pennsylvania email, emails blared, “BREAKING: PRESIDENT TRUMP WINS PENNSYLVANIA,” and declared, “We have won Pennsylvania” in the text. (In fact, no winner had been declared at the time, and Trump was actually declared the loser of the state on Nov. 7.)
A later version of the same email, from Nov. 6, eliminated the references to winning Pennsylvania while otherwise including the same text.
And while the RNC’s chief copywriter said she and her team were at some point advised not to use “rigged,” the word appeared in several fundraising emails in mid-November. One cited “what the Left did: THEY RIGGED THE ELECTION!”
Several emails referred to allegations made in affidavits or in news reporting, or they simply raised the prospect of illegality. “Did Michigan Secretary of State break the law? Did voting machines CHANGE votes from TRUMP to BIDEN?” one said. “It’s reported that vans, trash cans, and boxes full of ballots for Biden were brought in to be counted during the early morning hours without Republican poll watchers,” said another. “Voting reportedly took place after the Election was over,” yet another said.
Indeed, when the claims were specific like this — rather than broadly generalized claims about having actually won the election — the language was couched, seemingly shifting accountability to those who made the claims.
There is some recent precedent for political fundraising being charged as wire fraud, and it hits close to home for Trump. His former White House and political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, was accused of wire fraud related to a fundraising effort to build the border wall, and three allies pleaded guilty or were convicted in the scheme. Trump as president preemptively pardoned Bannon, though Bannon now faces similar charges from the Manhattan district attorney.
But that case involved direct claims about how the donor money would be spent that was easy to compare to how it was actually spent. The others involved acknowledged they had made representations that they knew were false.
The question before Smith would seem to be whether telling donors you won an election based upon nothing and sharing these dubious claims defrauded them. Trump’s legal team would surely argue that political fundraising emails often contain such hyperbolic rhetoric and/or that Trump actually did believe he had won (he also stated this publicly). It would seem to be a more difficult case to make, based upon what we know now.
But at least it would cast a spotlight on how ridiculous fundraising emails are.
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/13/trump-emails-fundraising-jack-smith/