and instead they merely took President Trump's words and made an effective fundraising email.[90] As Zambrano stated, "the President issuing statements or tweets would be the genesis of the copy that would then go into the approval process for edits, for checks. That is why the approval process worked."[91] President Trump was the source of the lies. Not only was President Trump's fundraising driven by his daily deluge of lies about the election, but these lies were also able to go unchallenged before being spread because TMAGAC had an ineffective process when it came to scrutinizing and correcting those lies.
The TMAGAC fundraising machine continued to churn out hundreds of fundraising emails and text messages regardless of external developments. For example, Zambrano said that, after former Vice President Biden was widely declared the winner of the election, TMAGAC's fundraising efforts moved ahead the same way they had previously,[92] even though he "would say it wasn't looking good" as soon as one week after the election.[93]
ALARMS RAISED ABOUT TMAGAC FUNDRAISING CONTENT
A number of individuals and entities associated with the TMAGAC fundraising campaign raised concerns about the dangerous and inflammatory language used in the emails issued for this campaign.
Concerns Raised in Internal RNC Review
Evidence obtained by the Select Committee shows that the RNC knew that President Trump's claims about winning the election were baseless and that additional donations would not help him secure an additional term in office. They walked as close to the line as they dared—making several changes to fundraising copy that seemingly protected the RNC from legal exposure while still spreading and relying on President Trump's known lies and misrepresentations.
The Select Committee did not interview a member of the RNC legal team due to concerns surrounding attorney-client privilege, but the Select Committee nonetheless got insight into their role from documents produced by Campaign and RNC staff, as well as interviews with staffers. As detailed below, the RNC lawyers were the only individuals who even attempted to walk back the fundraising emails.
Allred and Katz both received direction from the RNC's lawyers shortly after the election to not say "steal the election" and instead were told to use "try to steal the election."[94] Allred also recalled that, at some point, the RNC legal team directed the copywriters not to use the term "rigged."[95]
After the media called the election for former Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday, November 7, 2020, the RNC began to quietly pull back from definitive language about President Trump having won the election and
