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Trump made less than $200 from Truth Social, FEC filings show

His 2024 campaign raked in more than $34m within the first few months of the year, mostly after news of his criminal indictment and prediction of his “arrest”

Alex Woodward
New York
Sunday 16 April 2023 09:40 BST
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Defiant Donald Trump declares he’ll run to become next US president even if convicted

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Donald Trump’s personal financial disclosure reports with the Federal Election Commission offer the first public glimpse into his earnings and financial state since leaving the White House in 2021.

A limited 101-page document reveals that the 2024 presidential candidate made more than $5m from speaking engagements, between $100,000 and $1m with his NFT scheme, and less than $201 from Truth Social, the social media media platform operated by a mostly Trump-owned umbrella company.

His filings also show that he earned $5m in royalties through “DT Marks Oman LLC,” one of his overseas business ventures.

A report from The New York Times last year found that his Trump Organization inked a deal with a Saudi real estate company to build a Trump-affiliated hotel, villa and golf course in Oman as part of a $4bn project.

Mr Trump also claimed to earn revenue from 16 different books, though most made him less than $201, according to the filing.

Truth Social, which is reportedly valued between $5m and $25m, made him less than $201, according to the document. He owns 90 per cent of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, the umbrella group for Truth Social.

The former president’s campaign, however, has raised $34m so far this year, mostly from his “arrest” prediction and news of the criminal charges against him, according to the Associated Press and Politico.

According to his campaign, reports with the Federal Election Commission will show that Mr Trump’s affiliated fundraising arms raised roughly $18.8m within the the first three months of the year – $4m of which came after his indictment on 30 March.

His campaign said he raised more than $15m between the announcement of charges against him and the end of the filing deadline.

Mr Trump’s campaign boasted that he raised more than $4m within 24 hours after New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced a criminal indictment against him. Within three days, the campaign announced that figure topped more than $7m.

His campaign has relied on similar tactics alleging “political persecution” against him in an effort to raise money from his supporters, including in the wake of his loss in the 2020 election and after the FBI search of his property at Mar-a-Lago in the classified documents probe last year.

The House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol reported that Mr Trump’s fundraising arms collected more than $100m in the first week after Election Day in 2020 alone, as his legal team launched a spurious effort to overturn the results.

His campaign and allies raised $250m from their baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, the committee’s report found. Last year, the panel’s senior investigative counsel Amanda Wick said Mr Trump’s campaign “pushed false election claims to fundraise, telling supporters it would be used to fight voter fraud that did not exist.”

Following the FBI search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago compound in August 2022, his son Eric Trump claimed that the campaign was “shattering all fundraising records” and “raised more money in the past 24 hours than ever before in recent history”.

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