Donald Trump has been quick to turn his attack machine on the vice president after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, shedding his derisive nickname for her: “Laffin’ Kamala Harris.”
But now that the Republican nominee is refocusing his campaign on Harris, there’s an uncomfortable truth Trump is having to face. How about that $5,000 check dated September 26, 2011, with Trump’s signature, and made payable to one “Attorney General Kamala D. Harris”?
Within hours of Biden’s historic decision on Sunday, and with another potential Trump v. Harris battle looming, Trump’s uncomfortable donation resurfaced on social media. Jared Moskowitz, a Democratic congressman from Florida, posted a photo of the check on his X feed with the words, “Was a wise investment.”
Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, sneered: “When Trump wrote that check to re-elect Kamala Harris in 2011, I bet he didn’t think she would cash it in 2024!”
In fact, the $5,000 donation was just one of many gifts from the Trump family to Harris while she was California’s top prosecutor. Documents obtained by the California secretary of state list the largest donation, $5,000, but also detail an additional $1,000 check from Trump to Harris in February 2013, early in her re-election campaign as the state’s attorney general.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka is also listed in the database, and she donated $2,000 to Harris’ re-election committee in June 2014.
The existence of $8,000 of Trump money ending up in Harris’ political coffers could haunt Trump on the campaign trail, just as it did during the 2020 presidential campaign when she was Biden’s running mate. Subsequently, Fox News revealed details about how the $5,000 donation came about.
The network dug into court documents and reported that Trump made the payment at the request of then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had held a fundraiser for Harris in September 2011. Trump was persuaded to buy a ticket to the event for the top price of $5,000, which Ivanka attended.
Trump insisted that his doing the favor for Schneiderman, who later fell from grace after being accused of physically assaulting multiple women, had nothing to do with the investigation into Trump University at the time.
Contrary to Steele’s social media joke, Harris will not be able to spend the $5,000 on her 2024 presidential campaign, should she secure the Democratic nomination. As the Sacramento Bee reported in 2020, she gave away the entire $6,000 he gave her when she began her race for U.S. Senate, leaving it to a civil rights nonprofit working in Central America.