CNN
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President Joe Biden raised and spent significantly more money last month than his Republican rival Donald Trump’s campaign coffers, new campaign reports filed Saturday showed, raising questions about how much longer the president’s political team can operate at full capacity if donations dry up.
Some big Democratic donors have expressed concern about Biden’s poor performance in last month’s presidential debate, leading to growing calls from lawmakers for him to abandon his bid for a second term in the White House.
The Biden campaign increased spending and spent more than $59 million on heavy advertising in June, according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission. The Biden campaign’s main campaign committee ended July with about $96 million in the bank — a significant amount, but not enough to sustain June’s ferocious spending pace for any length of time without a new infusion of funds.
In contrast, the Trump campaign spent just under $10 million, leaving it with $128 million in its campaign coffers.
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Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee raised about $67 million in June, one of its biggest fundraising months in recent memory and well above the $39.2 million the Democratic National Committee raised last month. Trump’s political organization was ahead of Biden and the Democrats in terms of funding heading into the general election runoff in July.
Biden campaign officials claim that they used the fundraising advantage the president enjoyed earlier this year to launch a strong ground operation in key battleground states that helped him win. They also say Biden raised $38 million in the four days following his panned debate performance. But the report filed late Saturday only included the final few days after the June 27 head-to-head battle in Atlanta. The impact of the debates and other key campaign milestones, such as the recently concluded Republican National Convention and the announcement of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, will not become clear until the campaign submits fundraising and spending details to federal regulators in August.
As CNN previously reported, some donors, fearful of major Republican losses in November if Biden remains on top, have been holding back on donations or postponing fundraisers as the president faces pressure from some Democrats to drop out of the race. One fundraiser on Cape Cod over the weekend raised more than $2 million, campaign officials said.
Saturday’s event was planned weeks before the current turmoil within the party and featured Vice President Kamala Harris, seen as Biden’s most likely successor if he were to drop out of the race.
“We are going to win this election,” Harris told the crowd on Saturday, urging them to spread that message to their friends.
Many campaign finance experts say that if Harris becomes the nominee, any money remaining in her campaign’s bank account will be transferred to her political operations because she is already in the race.
But in a foreshadowing of the legal battle that could erupt over Biden’s withdrawal, some Republican lawyers have pushed back, arguing that under one interpretation, Biden and Harris must be formally nominated by the party before any funds can be transferred.
“If President Biden plans to hand the baton to his vice president and wants to support her campaign with current Biden campaign funds, he will first need to become the party’s official nominee,” veteran Republican election lawyer Charlie Spiess wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.
While Biden outraised his Republican rival in fundraising last month, filings in recent days have highlighted how Trump has used his legal troubles as a fundraising ploy.
Donations to Trump’s political campaigns surged on May 30, the day he was convicted in the New York hush-payment case. On that day, three joint fundraising committees reported receiving $19 million in contributions over $200, according to a CNN analysis of recent filings with the Federal Election Commission.
Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury on 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to adult film stars, a conviction that Trump and his allies claim was politically motivated.
The analysis found that May 30 was Trump’s busiest fundraising day in the 12 months ending June 30.
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CNN analyzed contribution statements from donors who gave more than $200 to calculate daily fundraising figures for Trump’s joint fundraising committees with the Republican National Committee and state party committees. A portion of the proceeds from one of these committees, the Trump 47 Committee, also goes to Leadership PAC, which has helped pay for the legal costs of Trump and his allies.
The leadership PAC Save America reported paying more than $827,000 in legal fees and owing another $1.64 million in legal debt through July, according to a Federal Election Commission filing Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has consistently spent far less money than the Biden campaign.
The bulk of the spending in June went to direct mail, according to filings. The Trump campaign is leaning heavily on conservative super PACs for data and field research to find a path to victory in battleground states, following a recent Federal Election Commission decision to allow candidates and super PACs to work more closely together on costly door-to-door canvassing efforts.
The main pro-Biden super PAC, Future Forward, had about $122 million at the end of June, according to a filing on Saturday. Nearly half of the $32.8 million the PAC raised last month came from the organization’s nonprofit arm, which does not disclose its donors.
Other big donors in June included LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman ($3 million), former Google CEO Eric Schmidt ($1.6 million) and James Murdoch, son of Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch, and his wife, Katherine, who gave a combined $100,000.
Meanwhile, MAGA Inc., the super PAC supporting Trump’s candidacy, had about $114 million in funds as of July.
Two-thirds of the $22.5 million raised last month came from three donors who wrote $5 million checks each: hotelier Robert Bigelow, Linda McMahon, who ran the Small Business Administration during Trump’s presidency and spoke at his presidential nominating convention, and tobacco giant Raleigh Services.
CNN’s Edward Isaac Dovere and Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.
