President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign is fundraising off of the impeachment inquiry launched by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, painting the effort as a partisan "witch hunt" to rile up his base.
Pelosi announced the House was launching the inquiry on Tuesday, and within about 48 hours the president's reelection campaign and the GOP had raked in roughly $13 million, The Associated Press reported.
For months, Pelosi pumped the brakes on impeachment amid concerns it would backfire on Democrats ahead of an election year. The escalating Ukraine scandal, however, led the Democratic leader to finally put her foot on the gas pedal and move things forward.
The Trump campaign has responded by working expeditiously to spin the impeachment inquiry into a profitable enterprise, spending $1 million on Facebook ads in the course of just three days last week. Additionally, the campaign sent out 65 million emails and 12 million text messages, Politico reported.
In one such email to Trump supporters, sent out last Thursday, the campaign said: "It's time to set something straight once and for all. The Democrats' constant personal attacks, vicious lies, and now these baseless impeachment attacks, have never had anything to do with me...Their goal has always been to silence YOU. They want to steal YOUR voice and YOUR vote." The email asked supporters to contribute and join the Trump campaign's "Official Impeachment Defense Task Force," and said the president would get a list of everyone who gives money.
The broad effort, which has also involved numerous tweets from Trump, appears to be working.
'A powerful message'
In the first 24 hours after the impeachment inquiry was announced, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee raised $5 million, The Associated Press reported. And Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale on Friday said the campaign had received money from 50,000 new donors in the past two days.
The Trump campaign and RNC on Tuesday also reported they had raised $125 million in the third quarter, representing a $20 million increase from fundraising in the second quarter.
Gerrit Lansing, the president of WinRed, the online fundraising platform used by the Trump campaign, on Tuesday told Politico, "When you're under attack, your supporters are more engaged and that's the general position [of the campaign's messaging] - that 'We're under siege,' and 'We need your help,' and 'This is ridiculous,' and 'Let's fight back. And that's a powerful message."
Read more: Trump's actions with Ukraine were 'profoundly stupid' and beyond anything any president has ever done, historians and veteran diplomats say
The impeachment inquiry into the president is linked to a whistleblower complaint that centers on a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the call, Trump urged Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The whistleblower complaint accuses Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election."
Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have made unsubstantiated allegations Biden pushed for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he'd previously investigated a natural gas company Hunter was on the board of. There's no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Biden.
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