But the Biden campaign demonstrated a clear cash advantage over Trump in filings Wednesday night, reporting $71 million in cash on hand to Trump’s $33.5 million — more than double his rival’s reserves. Biden’s campaign widened the gap from the end of January, when it led Trump’s campaign $56 million to $30.5 million.
The reports underscore the extent to which Trump’s legal troubles are putting a strain on his campaign. Save America, the political action committee that the Trump campaign has been using to pay the legal bills for the former president and many of his associates, spent more than it raised in February — with the vast majority of its spending going to legal costs.
The Save America PAC reported about $4 million in cash on hand at the end of February. It spent about $7 million over the same period, including $5.6 million paid to lawyers. Since the start of this year, Save America has spent $8.5 million on legal bills, and the Trump campaign has spent $1.8 million on such costs.
Trump has used the charges against him as a rallying cry to galvanize his supporters — accusing Democrats and President Biden of weaponizing the powers of the Justice Department against him. (Biden has said that he has not suggested to the Justice Department what it should or should not do regarding charges.) Trump has structured his fundraising effort to benefit from those claims. Each time a donor contributes a dollar to the campaign through his joint fundraising committee, 10 cents is directed to Save America and 90 cents is allocated to the Trump presidential campaign.
Trump’s campaign brought in nearly $11 million in February and had $33.5 million in cash on hand at the end of the month. Almost all of the money that Trump’s campaign brought in during February came in the form of a transfer from a joint fundraising committee, campaign finance records show. Both Biden and Trump rely on a constellation of committees that together can raise and spend money on behalf of their candidacies.
Though Biden has trailed Trump in many of the early national and battleground state polls, the incumbent’s campaign and allied groups are outpacing Trump’s effort in fundraising and the cash stockpiled for the general election. The disparity is fueled in part by the fact that Biden did not face a contested primary and has been able to raise money in conjunction with the Democratic National Committee, as well as state parties.
The Biden campaign said that it ended February with $155 million in the bank and that it raised money from nearly half a million donors. The team also said it raised $53 million in February across all of the five entities that are fundraising for the president’s effort, including the DNC. It did not release a breakdown of how much each committee had raised, and some of those reports will not be available until April.
With flush coffers, the Biden team launched a $30 million spring advertising campaign in key swing states — including an ad aimed at Latino voters. The campaign has said it will open more than 100 offices this month, and Biden launched a national organizing program to engage Hispanic voters in Arizona this week.
The Trump campaign just recently joined forces with the Republican National Committee, which has faced its own fundraising strains, and began integrating their fundraising teams and other staff to create greater efficiencies. The campaign negotiated the terms of a joint fundraising agreement with the RNC and state parties across the country, which will help accelerate fundraising for the GOP effort.
