Trump announces $51M fundraising haul for June

Donald Trump’s campaign on Wednesday announced a $51 million fundraising haul for June, a significant improvement that still falls shy of Hillary Clinton’s massive fundraising efforts.

The campaign said it raised almost $20 million directly, with another $6.6 million coming from a joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee (RNC). 

{mosads}The remaining $25 million — which the campaign noted stretched from the last week of May through June — came from a committee set up to raise money for the Trump campaign, the RNC and state parties in 11 states. 

That sum came from 22 fundraisers across the country — individual donors can write checks for up to $449,400 to contribute the maximum to all of the different committees included. 

The presumptive presidential nominee donated $3.8 million of his own money to the effort, bringing the total to about $55 million, the campaign added.

“We just started our fundraising efforts in the last week of May and we are extremely pleased with the broad-based support in the last five weeks for the Trump Campaign and Trump Victory,” Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s finance chairman, said in a statement. 

The figure shows a dramatic scaling up of his fundraising effort since May, when he raised just $5.6 million in direct contributions to his campaign — a sum that included a more-than-$2 million loan from Trump himself.

That disclosure, revealing just $1.3 million in cash on hand, seriously concerned Republicans who questioned whether Trump would have the resources to compete with Clinton.  

Wednesday’s release presents a strong rebuttal to those concerns, but the effort still falls short of Clinton, whose campaign said it raised $68 million in June, with more than $40 million directly to her campaign. 

Clinton ended May with about $40 million more in cash on hand than Trump.

Official fundraising reports aren’t due to the Federal Election Commission until July 20. Those documents will reveal more details about how Trump raised his money and about how much money each candidate has in the bank. 

It will also confirm whether Trump followed through on his promise to reclassify his personal loans to the campaign as donations — blocking his ability to repay himself with donated money. 

Trump’s campaign has claimed in fundraising pitches that it raised more than $11 million “in just a few days” from emails to supporters, including more than $2 million over a 24-hour span in just one email alone. 

– Updated at 2:29 p.m