Trump personally 'monitors' how much donors give as campaign amasses '$2 billion windfall'

A new report in The Atlantic shows that despite President Donald Trump's campaign having ended a year ago, he has not stopped fundraising — and is now sitting on a $2 billion windfall.

"I want you to keep going," Trump told his top fundraiser Meredith O'Rourke the morning after he won his second term, The Atlantic reports.

Trump's second inaugural committee raised $241 million, "about $90 million more than organizers needed to fund the events — and nearly four times as much as Joe Biden had raised for his own inauguration, in 2021. But that was just the beginning," write Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker.

Trump, they write, wanted money for "political operations that many politicians support," but he also wanted it for "technically apolitical causes."

Among those causes, they write, include those that "offered corporations and wealthy individuals a chance to make tax-deductible contributions, including a dramatic White House renovation, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (now under his control), his presidential library and a celebratory Army parade on his birthday."

"By August, Trump estimated that he had collected at least $1.5 billion since the election, more than all the money raised to support his 2024 campaign over two years, including funds raised by supportive independent super PACs," they report.

That amount is now near $2 billion, according to two people who spoke with the authors anonymously.

"Trump has kept careful track of the money coming in, regularly calling O’Rourke late at night for updates," according to the report. "He monitors who is giving, who is not, and the role of lobbyists who bundle donations, those familiar with his efforts told us."

"At times, the actual donation amount is less important to the president than the percentage of the donor’s overall assets. He thanks the most generous benefactors at swanky events at the White House and his clubs," they add.

"Trump and his aides cast donations to his political groups or priorities as acts of patriotism," they write.

Much of this windfall comes from companies or people who have business with the government, they report, including defense contractors, crypto investors and tech companies.

"A select group of companies and executives — Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Coinbase, Palantir CEO Alex Karp — are top donors to multiple Trump projects," they note.

None of this, they say, is normal, and "nothing on this scale was ever attempted by a sitting president prior to Trump."

"And he’s just getting started. He hasn’t stopped,” a third anonymous source tells them, “and I don’t anticipate that we will stop.”

Trump's "relentless fundraising" has alarmed ethics watchdogs, they write, despite Trump advisors saying his donations are merely from those who "support his political agenda."

Media and technology companies that Trump has sued, they report, "have collectively made $85 million in payments to some of his pet projects in order to settle the lawsuits," including Paramount and the parent company of YouTube.

“There are people being asked to do 10-to-25-million-dollar checks for the ballroom, for the inauguration, for the presidential library,” another person familiar with the requests tells The Atlantic. “That spigot is never going to close, ever. This is just the cost of doing business. They will write a multimillion-dollar check to avoid the $2 billion lawsuit. It’s a business decision.”

Trump continues to raise money for his library, and for the midterm elections in 2026, they say, but he is also collecting "funds for a dark-money group, Securing American Greatness," they write.

Trevor Potter, a former Republican chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, tells The Atlantic in a statement, "While it is not unusual for lame duck presidents to fundraise for their Libraries, what we are seeing from President Trump in his first year of office is shockingly unprecedented."

“The president’s seemingly insatiable drive for money from corporations and billionaires seeking government favors (or merely hoping to procure protection from Trump attacks on their business interests) sends a clear signal to everyday Americans that their needs come far behind those of the ultrawealthy who are buying access and favor," Potter adds.