Money-Grubbing Felon’s Wild Warning to MAGA: Back Off

It’s every man for themselves in the Wild West of the Republican Party, with convicted felon Donald Trump warning other party members to stay far away from his fundraising efforts.

The presumptive GOP presidential candidate’s campaign wasted no time Thursday leveraging his hush-money conviction for its fundraising efforts, raising $34.8 million in a small-dollar haul in the hours after Trump became the first former president turned convicted felon in U.S. history. In emails to his supporters, a free-walking Trump described himself as a “political prisoner” and questioned if the verdict would be the “end of America.”

But Trump has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want any down-ballot Republicans to join his crusade—for fear that they could line their own pockets with donations that might instead have gone to him.

“Any Republican elected official, candidate or party committee siphoning money from President Trump’s donors are no better than Judge Merchan’s daughter,” Trump co–campaign manager Chris LaCivita told Politico. “We’re keeping a list, we’ll be checking it twice, and we aren’t in the spirit of Christmas.”

The Trump campaign had already delivered an unusual notice to GOP vendors in April requesting that other campaigning Republicans “who choose to use President Trump’s name, image, and likeness” share a minimum of 5 percent of their fundraising solicitations with the former president.

“This includes but is not limited to sending to the house file, prospecting vendors, and advertising,” LaCivita and his campaign co-manager Susie Wiles wrote in the letter.

But the ongoing money-grubbing is a stark sign for the health of the Trump campaign. Trump’s previous grifts included launching a remarkably ugly sneaker and selling NFT trading cards of himself dressed in superhero costumes and astronaut suits. And, on top of maintaining some GOP megadonors post-conviction, Trump is well on his way to morphing the RNC into his personal piggy bank.

In March, he installed his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to co-run the organization alongside North Carolina GOP Chairman Michael Whatley. In an interview with Real America’s Voice, Lara Trump vaguely promised that “every single penny of every dollar donated” will go to causes that “people care about.”

But Republicans saw through that.

“There will be zero money available for any candidates down ballot. Zero,” Liz Mair, a Republican strategist, told USA Today at the time. “All of it will be funneled into the presidential, and despite what Chris LaCivita says, I’m pretty sure as much of it as can be will actually be funneled into covering Trump lawsuit costs.”

After Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial Thursday, Republicans threw a fit. Old criticisms of Trump were immediately forgotten, and full-throated defenses of the first president to be convicted of a crime began.

Former Representative Justin Amash, one of the few conservatives who supported Trump’s impeachment over the Ukraine scandal during his presidency, surprisingly came out swinging, calling the verdict “an affront to the rule of law.” Amash probably seeks to get more Republican support for his run for the Senate in Michigan.

Senator Marco Rubio, who Trump derisively called “little Marco” during the 2016 presidential elections, said that “Biden leftists in New York made a mockery of our criminal justice system,” and predicted Trump would win anyway.

Senator J.D. Vance, a Trump V.P. contender and one of the first Republican politicians to react to the news, called the verdict “election interference.”

Hours after the verdict was delivered, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saw fit to chime in.

And, in a case of poor timing, Senator Chuck Grassley tweeted out a picture of himself enjoying ice cream not long after the verdict.

(More than an hour later, he condemned the verdict and said he expected it to be overturned.)

Ivanka Trump offered just four words in support of her freshly convicted felon father on Thursday, publishing to her Instagram stories a photo of herself as a child sitting on her future-convict father’s lap with the text “I love you dad” with a heart emoji. The post was kept to Ivanka’s stories, where it will disappear in a matter of hours—evidently not worth sharing as a post and soiling her highly curated influencer-style grid.

It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see from someone who forgot it was Father’s Day and who doesn’t really keep in contact with their dad, not from the daughter of a former president turned convict in one of the most highly publicized trials of the century.

Despite profiting tremendously from Trump’s political career, Ivanka has remained completely silent through his criminal one. And while her brothers, Don Jr. and Eric, have made appearances at the Manhattan courthouse—including Don Jr. stuffing his face with junk food while awaiting the verdict with his dad and Eric reportedly staring a hole in the back of a court officer in the courtroom as the guilty verdicts came down—Ivanka didn’t show up at all.

Trump was found guilty by a jury of New Yorkers of 34 felonies on Thursday, over payments he sent to Stormy Daniels to keep silent about their queasy tryst. He’s due back in court for sentencing in July.

Donald Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche still believes in his failed legal strategy to defend the former president—even though he’ll readily admit that the plan did not cover all the bases.

Hours after the courtroom adjourned Thursday, Blanche ran a media circuit, standing firm that the defense had done “the best we could” while still insisting that the defense strategy had been airtight.

“We never saw… some key figures who got brought up a lot. Why didn’t the defense call any of these witnesses?” asked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

“Well, because we happen to live in America,” Blanche chortled. “We don’t have the burden of proof. So, that’s not the point.”

“The question that we asked the jury… is why the prosecution didn’t call those witnesses,” he continued. “As a defense attorney, you don’t go into a case saying, ‘I’m going to fill the holes of the prosecution.’”

It’s wild to claim it simply wasn’t his responsibility to call supposedly crucial witnesses who could have exonerated his client, and Trump himself wasn’t happy with the lapse. In the days leading up to the jury’s decision, Trump torched his attorneys online, claiming that his team had not pursued the legal strategy he wanted and that crucial witnesses had been left on the table.

But Blanche couldn’t defend that narrative either, instead telling Fox News’s Jesse Watters that Trump was “very involved” in his own defense.

“He’s a smart guy, he knows what he’s doing. He jokingly said to us a lot that sometimes he wanted to be the litigator, he wanted to be arguing, because he knows what he’s doing,” Blanche said. “We made every decision together.”

And mind-bogglingly, when Watters asked if he would have done anything differently, Blanche said he “wouldn’t change anything that we did”—apparently including ending with a conviction.

The month-long trial ended in a guilty verdict for Trump, the first criminal conviction of a former president in U.S. history. Trump’s sentencing is scheduled for July 11, just three days before the Republican National Convention.

Convicted felon Donald Trump might need to turn to some of his ex-allies in order to help him out with his newfound legal guilt—namely, “Tiny D” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Trump’s ability to vote for himself in November will depend on the details of his sentence, which is expected July 11. His vote is further complicated by his choice of permanent residence—Florida—which bars felons from participating in elections. And Florida’s regulations on the issue are particularly restrictive: even if a person is convicted of a felony in another state, as long as the state recognizes the crime, they still won’t be allowed to cast their ballots until they complete their sentence.

Trump has another option, though: DeSantis, whom Trump has also dubbed “Meatball Ron” and “Pudding Fingers,” could make a special exception for his former primary competitor.

New York Justice Juan Merchan could sentence Trump to up to four years in prison. He could also impose probation, supervised release, or order Trump to do community service or pay fines. Trump would need to complete all portions of his sentence before he’d be allowed to vote again in Florida, Alex Saiz, legal director of the Florida Justice Center, explained to Politico.

“Let’s say for whatever reason, Donald Trump gets just a fine and no [prison] sentence. If he doesn’t pay that fine, then he can’t vote until that fine is paid,” Saiz told the publication. “But if he gets given time served and a $500 fine, once he has paid that $500 fine and owes no more money and has no more supervision, then he is eligible to vote in the state of Florida.”

If Trump completes his sentence, he may still be loath to ask DeSantis for help. But considering the fact that DeSantis seems perfectly happy fundraising for the man who once called him a groomer, he may be willing to intervene.