The Republican nominee is refusing to disclose basic fundraising details that Clinton does and past GOP nominees did as a routine matter.S.V. Date
Senior Political Correspondent
WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump held a high-dollar fundraiser in Chicago last week. Then another two in Michigan. And then another one in New Jersey on Saturday.
Want to know who hosted them? How many people showed up? What the minimum donation was? Well, too bad. It’s none of your business.
At least that’s how the Republican presidential nominee and the Republican National Committee see it, repudiating years of standard practice by both GOP and Democratic presidential nominees ― and undercutting a key Republican attack against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her secretiveness.
“Any other answer than they simply don’t care would be over-analyzing it,” said Kevin Madden, a top adviser to 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. “
That’s always been a core argument of Trump critics even inside the party: that he’s the one candidate who actually makes a debate with Clinton over issues of trust and transparency a competitive one. It shouldn’t be close.”
Clinton’s campaign after each fundraising event discloses the name and location of the host, the minimum donation and the number of attendees. Clinton further releases a list of her “bundlers,” those supporters who collect donations on her behalf ― another common practice that Trump is not doing.
“The Trump campaign doesn’t seem to care about the perception that this undermines their ability to prosecute Hillary Clinton’s lack of transparency,” said fellow Romney 2012 alumnus Ryan Williams. “This is a candidate who hasn’t even released his tax returns ― a much bigger issue than disclosing information about fundraisers.”
Indeed, with his refusal to disclose his financial history, his unwillingness to permit a small contingent of journalists to accompany him on all his travels and his opaque fundraising, Trump has actually become the least transparent, most secretive nominee in the post-Watergate era.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to queries from The Huffington Post about why it was not disclosing fundraising details. One top RNC official promised “to look into” the question, but never followed up with an answer.
The Clinton campaign began releasing information about its fundraising events right from its start in April 2015. On Friday evening, for example, Clinton held a fundraiser at the Miami Beach home of Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure, the campaign reported. The minimum contribution was $10,000, while “chairs” had to donate or contribute $100,000 per couple. About 130 people attended.
The campaign has sent out 98 such fundraising reports to the media in the past six weeks alone. The Clinton campaign
also lists all of its bundlers who have raised or contributed $100,000 or more on its website, even though the law only requires disclosure of bundlers who are registered lobbyists.
Trump’s campaign didn’t file a lobbyist bundling report for the second quarter with the Federal Election Commission. Nor does it make any effort to disclose its non-lobbyist bundlers on its website.
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