Minutes after the jury returned a guilty verdict in former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York, an influx of donations to his presidential campaign as an apparent show of support caused his donation page to temporarily become unavailable.
A jury found the former president guilty on May 30 in a case in which President Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal non-disclosure payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels as part of an attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election in which he was a candidate.
Within minutes of the jury returning the verdict, President Trump’s donation page displayed a 500 error stating “something went wrong,” leading to widespread speculation of a tidal wave of donations underway, possibly out of a combination of support for the former president and outrage at the guilty verdict.
The Trump campaign later confirmed that the page was down due to a torrent of donations.
“The American people see through Crooked Joe Biden’s rigged show trial. So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump’s campaign that the WinRed pages went down,” the Team Trump account on X said in a post. “We are working on getting the website back online as quickly as possible. Stay strong.”
The page has since gone back up, with the Trump campaign confirming that fact in a follow-up post.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a staunch supporter of President Trump, took to X to say that the “best way to fight back right now against the sham trial is to donate to the Trump campaign,” while sharing a link to a new “Never Surrender” donation page that features a message from the former president.
“I’m a political prisoner!” reads the message, which features President Trump’s signature and a photo of his mugshot. “I was just convicted in a rigged political witch hunt trial.”
“They’ve raided my home, arrested me, took my mugshot, and now they’ve just convicted me,” reads the message, with the former president calling on his supporters to donate and send a message to President Joe Biden that his chances of a second term in office “end today.”
“But for that to happen, our immediate pushback must be so massive, it will go down in history,” President Trump continued.
Like Mr. Vance, other Republicans condemned the guilty verdict, which made President Trump the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a crime.
Democrats and the Biden presidential campaign reacted to the verdict with satisfaction.
“Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” Biden–Harris 2024 communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement.
White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a post on X: “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.”
An attorney for the former president told CNN before the jury delivered the verdict that his legal team would be prepared to quickly appeal, putting the case in the hands of the New York Court of Appeals.
