Trumpworld Has Been Using a Christian Crowdfunding Platform to Rake in Cash
GiveSendGo has been a friendly resource for those looking to push claims of election fraud
This article was reported in partnership with Type Investigations with support from the Puffin Foundation.
Donald Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the results of the 2020 presidential election set off a gold rush, allowing prominent lawyers, conservative PACs, Republican lawmakers, and others in the former president’s orbit to raise millions of dollars off false claims of a stolen election.
Among the most successful fundraisers is Matthew Braynard, the former director of data and strategy for Trump’s 2016 campaign. Braynard had launched his fundraising page on the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo on November 7, promising to use the money to “detect potentially fraudulent ballots.” After a week, donations had surpassed the goal of $590,000 that he had set by tens of thousands of dollars, and by mid-January, the campaign had raised more than $675,000 from nearly 9,000 donations.
Braynard used the funds, he said, to acquire voter data from swing states, analyze records for suspicious voter registrations, and call individuals to confirm whether they had actually cast a ballot. He was…
