https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/u...donations.html
Trump Camp Uses Online Gimmick to Fuel Donations Into December

The Trump campaign is now automatically checking a box to create
recurring weekly donations from supporters until mid-December.

By Shane Goldmacher
Published Oct. 31, 2020Updated Feb. 1, 2021

President Trump’s campaign is raising money for a prolonged political
and legal fight long after Nov. 3 and recently began automatically
checking a box to withdraw additional weekly contributions from online
donors through mid-December — nearly six weeks after Election Day.

Predicting “FRAUD like you’ve never seen,” the language on Mr. Trump’s
website opts contributors into making the weekly post-election donations
“to ensure we have the resources to protect the results and keep
fighting even after Election Day.” Users must proactively click to avoid
making multiple contributions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/u...onations.html?
How Trump Steered Supporters Into Unwitting Donations

Online donors were guided into weekly recurring contributions. Demands
for refunds spiked. Complaints to banks and credit card companies
soared. But the money helped keep Donald Trump’s struggling campaign
afloat.

Shane Goldmacher

By Shane Goldmacher
Published April 3, 2021Updated April 5, 2021

Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush
Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald J. Trump’s campaign
needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could:
$500.

It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas
City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution —
federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another
$500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week
through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Mr. Blatt’s bank
account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments
bounced, he called his brother, Russell, for help.

What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump
campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they
thought they were victims of fraud.

“It felt,” Russell said, “like it was a scam.”

But what the Blatts believed was duplicity was actually an intentional
scheme to boost revenues by the Trump campaign and the for-profit
company that processed its online donations, WinRed. Facing a cash
crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had
begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online
donors, for every week until the election.



https://nypost.com/2021/04/05/trump-...ought-refunds/
Trump attacks NY Times for report on recurring donors who sought refunds

Former President Donald Trump on Monday ripped into the New York Times
for running a story on refunds issued to people who claimed they
unwittingly signed up to be recurring donors to his campaign.

Trump said in an emailed statement that the article was a “completely
misleading, one-sided attack piece” that sought to demean him.

“In yet another highly partisan story, the failing New York Times wrote
a completely misleading, one-sided attack piece this weekend that tried
to disparage our record-setting grassroots fundraising operation during
the 2020 campaign,” Trump said......


https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/re...-donation-dec/

Claim The Trump Campaign's fundraising platform is soliciting recurring
donations until mid-December and automatically checking the box that
authorizes this option.

Rating True

On Oct. 31 2020, The New York Times reported that the Trump Campaign’s
fundraising landing page was “now automatically checking a box to create
recurring weekly donations from supporters until mid-December.” This is
true, though the “automatically checked box” development is fairly old
news. The Trump Campaign’s primary fundraising platform — WinRed —
changed the landing page to automatically check the monthly recurring
donation option in March 2020. The shift to soliciting for weekly
donations occurred in mid-September 2020, with that option also
appearing as pre-checked.

The more recent development is the change in when those weekly
contributions would stop. Earlier solicitations committed people to
donations that would stop automatically recurring on Election Day, Nov.
3 2020. In late October, the text was changed to read “make this a
recurring donation until 12/14.” It bears mentioning that well before
any returns came in on Nov. 3, the campaign encouraged donations as a
way to “keep fighting after election day” because “there will be voter
fraud like you’ve never seen.”