Even Donald Trump Is Using the Jan. 6 Hearings to Appeal for Donations
(Bloomberg) -- Politicians and special interests are using the Jan. 6 hearings in appeals for donations, with even former President Donald Trump trying to cash in on the congressional probe of his role in the deadly US Capitol assault.
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Like a two-way toll booth just around the corner from this fall’s mid-term elections, donor appeals playing off the investigation run a gamut. They go from committees for Democrats enthusiastically praising the House panel and Republican organizations denouncing it to groups focused on specific policy changes.
Trump emailed an appeal labeling the hearings “Another Partisan Witch hunt” along with an ask for a contribution. “Joe Biden is failing BADLY, yet the radical Left socialists in Washington are pretending nothing is wrong,” says the fundraising plea.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s political arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, offers in one of its appeals an ominous-sounding quote from committee Democrat Jamie Raskin: “The hour of truth is coming.”
The committee hearings, it says, will let investigators finally unveil their findings to the public, and that’s why Raskin “is fired up like we’ve never seen him before.”
Televised political moments offer big opportunities for fundraising, according to Mike Nellis, the chief executive officer of Authentic, a digital agency that works with Democratic campaigns. “Big moments motivate people to take action. That’s particularly true of hardcore activists and donors in both parties,” he said.
So far, the emailed and texted appeals haven’t led to a spike in donations for Democrats as big as those triggered by other high-profile events such as nominating conventions and presidential debates. ActBlue’s donation counter showed an increase of about $7.5 million since Thursday afternoon, when some of the earliest pitches started arriving in in-boxes, through 3:30 p.m. Washington Time on Friday.
That’s a far cry from the $53 million raised in the 18 hours after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was announced in September, which was followed by a series of record amounts given through ActBlue in the days that followed.
Ginsburg’s death came just weeks before the presidential election, when people were more attuned to politics, and other issues may be more pressing to many voters now than the Jan. 6 postmortem.
“These hearings are important, but I suspect for many Americans it’s just background noise in face of high gas prices and inflation,” Nellis said.
‘Propaganda Hearings’
How much Republicans are raising is unknown. WinRed, the GOP’s counterpart to ActBlue, doesn’t have a public counter displaying donation totals.
“House Democrats and their puppets are holding prime time, made-for-Hollywood Jan. 6 propaganda hearings to DESTROY President Trump’s legacy and ATTACK every last one of his supporters,” declares one appeal sent out by a fundraising political action committee for the No. 2 House Republican, Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
As if to the rescue, the Scalise fundraising email contends that “an emergency 500% donor match has been activated,” and if 10,000 pro-Trump patriots can be mobilized, “we’ll make these sham hearings COMPLETELY BACKFIRE.”
Some appeals seek to capitalize on more personal connections.
“I’ve been subpoenaed by the January 6th Committee,” Republican Representative Jim Jordan’s campaign committee announces. “Can you chip in today to help me defend myself from this vicious attack so that I can get back to doing the job I was elected to do?”
Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal’s campaign arm asks if donors could contribute as little as $3 by recounting that she “feared for her life” in the besieged House chamber on Jan. 6, and that the committee will hold people accountable for that day.
“When the House Floor was cleared on January 6th, about 30 of us were left behind, trapped in the gallery as the insurrectionists invaded,” the fundraising email says. “I am grateful that I reached safety later that day, but our democracy is far from safe.”
Some outside political action committees are depicting themselves as coming to the rescue of lawmakers they favor, such as Abolish the Electoral College, which describes itself as a grassroots, nationwide organization fighting to end an unjust and antiquated system.
One of its emails warns would-be donors that Trump Republicans are trying to smear the Jan. 6 committee’s GOP vice chair, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, and “we need to know if these attacks are working.” At the bottom of a request for readers to grade Cheney as a panel member, there’s a request for a $5 donation.
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