Since news broke last week that former President Donald Trump would face felony charges in Manhattan, Democratic politicians have emphasized that the first-ever criminal indictment of a former president is a somber occasion—not to be celebrated but lamented, or perhaps just avoided entirely.
In fact, House Democratic leadership is reportedly advising members that there is no need to comment on Trump’s case; if they do, they advise sticking to talking points, like “nobody is above the law,” to avoid fueling the perception that Trump’s prosecution is about partisan gain.
The politicians themselves have largely followed that advice. But organizations working to elect Democrats are inhabiting a parallel political reality—one where Trump’s indictment is a golden opportunity to fill their campaign coffers with cash and curry favor with the party’s fervently anti-Trump base.
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In the past week, the Democratic Party’s official campaign committees for House, Senate, and state legislative races have all sent fundraising solicitations based on the Trump indictment, along with their unofficial outside counterparts, Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC.
A number of candidates facing competitive elections have also fundraised off the indictment, like California Senate contenders Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), and several representatives of battleground House districts. An array of Democrats in safe seats have fundraised off the indictment, too.
At times, the pitches matched the somber tone set by Democratic officials—but more often, they embodied the apocalyptic, hair-on-fire style often criticized in contemporary fundraising emails.
An email from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, for instance, blared that Trump’s indictment “raises the stakes astronomically” for the 2024 election. “Trump’s allies and donors will now stop at NOTHING to protect him and defeat Democrats… Please, Democrats MUST stand together in this make-or-break moment,” it continued.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, meanwhile, pleaded with recipients to make last Thursday—when the indictment news broke—“one of the biggest fundraising days in Democratic history.”
House Majority PAC called for their “top supporters” to donate $15 and “make sure Trumpster Republicans never—EVER—step into the House again.”
To some Democrats who have grown increasingly exasperated with the party’s fundraising tactics, the attempt to leverage a politically sensitive situation for campaign dollars comes across as short-sighted.
One official, granted anonymity to speak candidly on party strategy, put it more bluntly: “It’s fucking idiotic that people are fundraising off this,” they told The Daily Beast.
“It really dilutes a serious moment and turns it into a cheap political shot,” the official continued. “It extends credence to the false argument that Donald Trump and Republicans make that these are political witch hunts.”
Other Democrats argued it would be malpractice to not fundraise off the indictment.
“There’s a lot of things that are off-limits for fundraising—this is not one of them,” said one Democratic strategist, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic. “This guy is running for the Republican nomination… it’s politicized because he’s a politician running for office.”
Still, other prominent Democrats urged caution across the board. Matt Bennett, executive vice president at the center-left think tank Third Way, suggested to The Daily Beast that Democrats in safe blue seats don’t have much to lose by using the indictment for messaging—or even for fundraising.
“But if you're Joe Biden, you know, a national leader, or you're a senator from a big complex state, or you're in a swing House District, then it probably makes more sense to just leave this alone,” Bennett added. (Biden himself has indeed stayed very, very far away from Trump’s legal woes.)
The wide schism between Democrats’ official statements and their fundraising rhetoric is an early illustration of the difficult balancing act the party will face in this election cycle. No likely major party nominee for president has ever run while under one—or potentially more—criminal indictments.
That cloud of criminal allegations could be a powerful boost for Democrats in a 2024 rematch with Trump, even if the cases might help Trump win a GOP primary. But candidates will have to tread carefully in leveraging them to paint him as unfit for office without further politicizing court proceedings, which could happen simultaneously with the heat of campaign season.
Trump, predictably, has sought to wring his own criminal case for every drop of possible political benefit. His campaign claimed it raised $7 million in the first three days after the indictment news broke.
Many Democratic fundraising messages alluded to that fact and pressured donors to ensure the party’s candidates aren’t outgunned by Trump. Republicans, argued the Democratic strategist, have such deep-pocketed donors that “we need to be doing everything we can to keep it as even as we can against them.”
But the Democratic official argued that “people have genuine, rightful complaints about how scammy fundraising can be” after election cycles in which both parties have employed aggressive tactics to fund their campaigns from online donors. The idea that there are two sets of rules for what candidates say and what fundraising emails can say, the official said, has to die.
“Fundraising should match what you’re saying publicly,” they said.
It’s true that some of the fundraising emails took a somber tone, as they asked supporters for cash—or, in some cases, did not explicitly ask at all.
One email from Schiff, for instance, served as a reflection from the longtime Trump foe on the historic news. “There will be some who celebrate this moment. But as much as I believe that Trump has been a serial lawbreaker, I won’t be one of them,” he wrote, going on to urge supporters to “redouble our effort to strengthen our democracy.” At the bottom of the email was a small red “DONATE” button.
Still, Schiff was directly pressed over the weekend about his fundraising activity in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.
“Has this criminal allegation, this indictment, already become too political?... You’re fundraising on it,” Mitchell asked Schiff.
The California Senate hopeful rebuffed the idea that he was uniquely politicizing Trump’s courtroom woes. “This is going to be, certainly, a political issue in terms of defending the rule of law… So I’m going to speak out on it. Other people are going to speak out on it,” he responded.
Beyond that, some Democrats are already staring down opponents who back Trump, making their fundraising asks a little more concrete. Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-NC), who defeated MAGA-aligned Bo Hines in a purple district last year, may face Hines again in 2024; he claimed in a fundraising email that Hines is “already trying to downplay” Trump’s indictment and asked to “rush a donation.”
There might have been some additional motivations for Democrats to seize the moment last week.
The indictment’s timing was especially serendipitous for cash-hungry politicians in both parties: news broke a little more than 24 hours before the end of the 2024 election cycle’s first fundraising quarter. Campaigns working to meet their goals and reap the most impressive hauls took the opportunity to hit their email lists hard.
“We cannot allow Trump to use this indictment to gain any sympathy or support. He’s already using this to fundraise ahead of tonight’s major end-of-quarter deadline,” read a Friday fundraising email from Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA), who represents a battleground district. He went on to ask his supporters to “please donate now to help me continue holding Trump and his MAGA extremist allies accountable.”
The DSCC and DCCC and did not respond to questions from The Daily Beast on how much they managed to raise off the indictment.
The DLCC responded to the same inquiry by saying, “We don't share our fundraising totals publicly.”
“Our supporters are always energized by protecting democracy—from holding Trump accountable to defeating his allies and insurrectionists running for state legislative office,” DLCC spokesperson Christina Polizzi added.
Seeing as Trump’s legal journey is just getting started, Democrats could have months of trials and criminal proceedings to fundraise off, if they so choose. The former president could also face additional indictments over the next few months, most likely in Fulton County, Georgia, where a grand jury has heard testimony about Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election outcome in that state.
For now though, some Democrats are leaning into that uncertainty—while asking their supporters to open their wallets.
“We don’t know what will happen next… But no matter what happens in Donald Trump’s court proceedings, we do know one thing: Trump has a clear history of shamelessly flouting the will of the American people and American voters,” read a fundraising email from Kaine, who will face a challenge in Virginia in 2024.
“Bottom line—Democrats need to be prepared for anything ahead of 2024,” the email continued, before listing four different options to donate below.
