Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN

Former President Donald Trump Republicans refunded nearly $ 13 million to donors earlier this year. Deployment of funding tactics In the 2020 elections, we tricked donors into offering more money than they intended or believed. The New York Times reported.

In addition, the Times reported on Saturday that more than $ 135 million was refunded to donors through Trump’s reelection campaign, the Republican National Committee, and their shared accounts in the 2020 cycle through June 2021. did.

NS Times survey earlier this year Last year’s Trump political activity found that weekly until election day, online donors were automatically registered for regular donations.

According to The Times, if a donor wants to opt out of a weekly donation, he or she will have to manually clear the checkbox on the digital donation form. The second preselected box has withdrawn another donation. According to the newspaper, the Trump campaign has made the disclaimer “more opaque” by including it in bold, uppercase text.

According to The Times, this tactic has led to refund requests from supporters and numerous credit card fraud complaints.

The Times quoted a new record released by the Federal Election Commission, out of the $ 12.8 million refund issued this year, $ 8.1 million from Trump and RNC’s shared account and $ 2.2 million from Trump’s reelection. The Commission reported that $ 2.5 million came from RNC.

The Times previously reported that Trump’s political activities and RNC had refunded $ 122 million. That’s more than 10% of the amount raised in 2020 through WinRed, which handles online donations to the Republican Party.

In comparison, President Joe Biden’s committee has refunded more than 2% of what he collected online last year through ActBlue, a Democratic donation processing site, The Times reported.

According to The Times, Republicans using WinRed continue to deploy pre-checked boxes for online donations, including Trump’s Political Action Commission Save America, but Democrats are using this tactic. I have stopped using it.

The Trump campaign has previously defended its online tactics. Campaign spokesman Jason Miller told the Times last year that less than 1% of transactions (about 200,000 transactions) were exposed to credit card disputes.

Miller did not respond to the Times regarding the refund issued this year.

Four democratic state prosecutors, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and Minnesota Examine funding practices Of Win Red and Act Blue.

WinRed appealed last month to stop the investigation in Minnesota, claiming that its activities were governed by federal law rather than state consumer protection law. It accused the inquiry of being “illegal, partisan, and hypocritical.”

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Fredreka Schouten of CNN contributed to this report.