On Thursday, Donald Trump became the first former president of the United States to be found guilty of a felony, but the news wasn’t all terrible for him.
Pre- and post-trial legal analysis pointed out that Judge Juan Merchan’s conduct in presiding over the trial most certainly violated Trump’s constitutional rights. On the other hand, some asserted that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, drafted the laws that resulted in the former president’s conviction. Others pointed out that Trump was found guilty of federal campaign finance offenses as well, which local and state DAs are not allowed to prosecute.
A campaign website crashed shortly after the guilty verdict on all 34 charges was read, demonstrating the former president’s ability to raise money in the hours following the trial. However, this was all before the legal opinions—Trump’s attorneys are anticipated to appeal his conviction right away.
Following his criminal conviction, WinRed, the payment processor for Republican campaign donations, failed, according to The New York Times, his campaign attributed the crash to the large volume of people attempting to donate in the immediate wake of the verdict.
“So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump’s campaign that the WinRed pages went down,” the Trump campaign said in a statement on social media.
When navigating to the Trump campaign’s donation page on the website, an error notice is no longer displayed. It’s unclear, though, if the website is accepting money and operating correctly. A request for comment was not immediately answered by the Trump campaign, according to The Times.
Although it was not included in the Times piece, President Joe Biden’s campaign moved swiftly to capitalize on the guilty verdict, according to Fox News.
“Despite a jury finding Donald Trump guilty today, there is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: At the ballot box,” the Biden campaign wrote in a fundraising text to supporters.
It further urged that “if you have been waiting for the perfect time to make your first donation to Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, we’re here to tell you today is the day.”
Following WinRed’s demise, donors were also referred by Trump’s campaign website to Anedot, another company that serves as a fundraising platform for Republican campaigns.
Trump campaign spokesman Brian Hughes told Fox News, “From just minutes after the verdict, the digital fundraising system has been hit with record numbers of supporters. The traffic is so large that it is causing intermittent delays. The campaign is grateful for this massive outpouring of support because it shows that Americans have seen this sham trial as the political election interference that Biden and Democrats have always intended.”
Fox further noted:
Minutes after the verdict was read in the first trial of a former or current president in the nation’s history, Trump’s team put out a fundraising appeal to supporters.
“Friend: Is this the end of America?,” Trump argued in the email. “I was just convicted in a RIGGED political Witch Hunt trial.
“My end-of-month fundraising deadline is just DAYS AWAY!” Trump emphasized in the email, which included a photo of the former president labeling him a “political prisoner.”
Shortly after his conviction, Trump said that he was going to refocus his attention back to beating Biden in the fall. He told Fox News’s Brooke Singman, “We’ll be fighting hard,” and that he was eager to return to the campaign trail.
“We are already back to the mission,” a Trump campaign spokesperson told the outlet. “President Trump won’t let this sham stop the movement of this campaign to save the nation.”
On his Truth Social platform, Trump also sounded a defiant tone, writing in all caps: “This was a disgrace — a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt. We will fight for our Constitution — this is long from over!”