Trump's reelection campaign is forced to refund $12.8 MILLION of the $58M recurring donations it raised after using 'deceptive tactic' where donors had to untick pre-checked boxes
President Donald Trump's aggressive fundraising tactics used for his re-election bid in 2020 has led to $12.8 million in refunds to his donors this year.
The refunds are about 20 percent of the $56 million Trump raised online last year.
Late into the campaign season, Trump's team had began opting online donors into automatic recurring donations by prechecking a box at the bottom of the digital form.
Yet another prechecked box below that opted supports into yet another donations.
Donors would have had to notice both boxes and uncheck them.
The check boxes appeared that appeared on the online donations forms were prechecked
Donors would have to spot both checks boxes and uncheck them to avoid being double or triple charged for their donations
Trump, pictured at a rally last year in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, has had to return about 20% of the funds he raised online last year due to the flurry of complaints over the checkboxes
Trump's campaign team then obscured that fact by burying the fine print beneath multiple lines of bold and capitalized text, The New York Times reported.
'It's pretty clear that the Trump campaign was engaging in deceptive tactics,' said Peter Loge, the director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University. 'If you have to return that much money you are doing something either very wrong or very unethical.'
The tactic allowed the campaign to see a short-term rise in revenue, but it was immediately followed by a flurry of complaints from donors who found they had been charged multiple times.
The NY Times found that Trump, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts had refunded more than $135 million to their donors as of June, 2021, half of which came after Election Day.
Trump, pictured at West Palm Beach, and his PAC, Save America, are allegedly still using the same fundraising tactics that led to the massive refunds
The refunds were issued after New York, Connecticut Minnesota and Maryland's state attorney generals investigated the case, and the Federal Election Commission urged congress to ban the practice.
Senator Amy Klobuchar and Dick Durbin introduced legislation to do just that in May.
Despite the investigations and disapproval from the FEC, Trump's Save America PAC is reportedly still using these same tactics, Forbes reports.
An email from sent out to supports this week from the PAC allegedly include the same, prechecked boxes.
The email tells donors they can increase their impact by 400% in the fight to 'save America from Joe Biden and his socialist allies.'
Save America did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.