The ruthless tactics employed were too much for a whistleblower and even some in Trump world. But, after losing the election, “the Trump Campaign and the RNC had three of their largest fundraising days of the 2020 election cycle” which netted them more than $100 million.
Salesforce, an RNC e-vendor, started being inundated with a “deluge of abuse” over the summer months leading up to the election, according to a whistleblower tucked inside Appendix 3 of the Jan. 6 report. ‘J. Doe,’ as the committee identifies them, “worked for Salesforce’s privacy and abuse management team, colloquially known as the abuse desk,” the report reads.
That desk is supposed to serve as the cop on the digital beat at Salesforce. Or, as the J6 panel explains in its report: “An abuse desk is responsible for preventing fraud and abuse emanating from the provider’s user or subscriber network.”
But when it came to the RNC and Trump Campaign, the abuse desk found itself muted by company executives. And in the lead-up to the election, the alarming vitriol only became more pitched and pointed.
“In the latter half of 2020, Doe noticed that the emails coming from the RNC’s account included more and more violent and inflammatory rhetoric in violation of Salesforce’s Master Service Agreement (“MSA”) with the RNC, which prohibited the use of violent content,” the committee report reads. “Doe stated that, near the time of the election, they contacted senior individuals at Salesforce to highlight the “increasingly concerning” emails coming from the RNC’s account. Doe explained that senior individuals at Salesforce effectively ignored their emails…”
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The Trump Campaign was already told their fundraising appeals needed to “be a little less threatening” by Seth Charles, a manager in the email deliverability division of Iterable—a vendor the campaign outsourced mass email blasts to before teaming up with the RNC.
The RNC used its Salesforce account to assist the Trump Campaign in getting around Iterable’s firewall that blocked users from sending out “threatening” content. The difference was noticeable, according to the whistleblower. Most of the complaints that poured in surrounding the RNC’s account centered on content being fed to the RNC from Trump’s Make America Great Again Cmte. (or TMAGAC).
“Even though the RNC had closely held reservations about repeating the most extreme and unsupportable claims of fraud,” the J6 committee found, “the RNC stayed the course with a coordinated, single fundraising plan with the Trump Campaign. The RNC privately and quietly softened the most blatantly egregious claims written by its own copywriters but publicly stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump…”
The scheme worked. All told, the Republican National Committee and Trump Campaign shook their most devoted donors down for more than $250 million by spreading 2020 Election lies.
“In the weeks after the 2020 election leading up to January 6, 2021, President Trump’s Campaign and his allies sent his supporters a barrage of emails and text messages pushing lies about a stolen election and asking for contributions to challenge the outcome of the election,” the special panel found. “In reality, the funds raised went primarily towards paying down the Trump Campaign’s outstanding 2020 debt, financing President Trump’s newly created Save America PAC, and raising money for the RNC.”
“The decision to continue fundraising after the election would have come from President Trump himself,” Justin Clark, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, testified.
The effort was underway before the election results were even in.
One young RNC staffer, Ethan Katz, even recounted being directed to pen an official email illegitimately declaring victory in Pennsylvania.
“Katz also recalled that, shortly after the election, Allred directed him to write an email declaring that President Trump had won the State of Pennsylvania before anyone had called Pennsylvania for either party,” the report reads. “Katz believed the Trump Campaign wanted to send this email out to preempt a potential call that was likely to be in former Vice President Biden’s favor. He refused to write the email.”
The RNC found a different copywriter to pen the lie.
“On November 4, 2020,” the committee notes, “the Trump Campaign sent out an email preemptively and falsely declaring that President Trump won Pennsylvania.”
The election is now over and defeat at hand—according to the courts, advisors, the attorney general, etc.—the cash kept flowing in. And Trump's son-in-law was watching every penny of the alleged ill-gotten gains roll in in real-time.
“On November 8, 2020, Kushner requested that a daily tracker be created showing the Trump Campaign’s financial position from election day forward,” the committee notes. “In an email, Kushner noted that the tracker would allow the Campaign to consider its cash flow ahead of the creation of ‘a new entity for POTUS[’s] other political activities.’”
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That new entity was Trump’s newly formed Save America PAC, which the J6 committee views as an inglorious and illegitimate slush fund for the former president.
“Evidence obtained by the Select Committee shows that the RNC knew that President Trump’s claims about winning the election were baseless and that additional donations would not help him secure an additional term in office,” the report reads. “They walked as close to the line as they dared—making several changes to fundraising copy that seemingly protected the RNC from legal exposure while still spreading and relying on President Trump’s known lies and misrepresentations.”
