WaPo:
One day after rioters ransacked the Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Republican lobbyist Geoff Verhoff sent a searing email to top GOP officials.
Verhoff, a bundler who works at the lobbying firm Akin Gump, wrote on Jan. 7 that he was appalled by President Donald Trump and the rioters, and he was resigning as co-chair of the Republican National Committee’s finance committee, according to a person with knowledge of the email. He could no longer associate himself with Trump and his movement, he wrote, and he was distressed by what his party had become.
But when Trump spoke to some of the party’s top donors last month, at a retreat convened at the Breakers resort in Palm Beach, Fla., by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Verhoff was one of the attendees, according to two people present and a list of attendees obtained by The Washington Post. He has also recently given sizable sums to Republican candidates, including three members of Congress who voted to overturn the results of the election, federal records show. Verhoff and a spokesman for Akin Gump did not respond to requests for comment.
After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, scores of donors and companies made public or private statements like Verhoff’s, vowing to withhold or rethink their funding for the GOP. But a review of attendees at elite donor retreats, financial filings and interviews with party officials, donors and fundraisers indicates the GOP has had a booming financial year, retaining significant support from many Fortune 500 companies and the city’s most influential lobbying shops, including some contributors who initially balked in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack.
Together, the RNC, NRSC and the National Republican Congressional Committee have taken in more than their Democratic counterparts in 2021 — $304 million, compared with $295 million for the Democrats, according to federal campaign finance disclosures. The RNC alone has raised more than $120 million this year, while Trump separately has more than $100 million on hand.
Republicans have also far outpaced their own 2013 and 2017 numbers, when they raised $135 million and $215 million, respectively, in the first nine months of those years.