This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here.
A family in Utah is suing the Republican National Convention for sending unhinged text messages soliciting donations to Donald Trump’s campaign and continuing to text even after they tried to unsubscribe.
“From Trump: ALL HELL JUST BROKE LOOSE! I WAS CONVICTED IN A RIGGED TRIAL!” one example text message in the complaint says. “I need you to read this NOW” followed by a link to a donation page.
The complaint, seeking to become a class-action lawsuit and brought by Utah residents Samantha and Cari Johnson, claims that the RNC, through the affiliated small-donations platform WinRed, violates the Utah Telephone and Facsimile Solicitation Act because the law states “[a] telephone solicitor may not make or cause to be made a telephone solicitation to a person who has informed the telephone solicitor, either in writing or orally, that the person does not wish to receive a telephone call from the telephone solicitor.”
The Johnsons claim that the RNC sent Samantha 17 messages from 16 different phone numbers, nine of the messages after she demanded the messages stop 12 times. Cari received 27 messages from 25 numbers, they claim, and she sent 20 stop requests. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, and Congressional Leadership Fund also sent a slew of texts and similarly didn’t stop after multiple requests, the complaint says.
On its website, WinRed says it’s an “online fundraising platform supported by a united front of the Trump campaign, RNC, NRSC, and NRCC.”
“Defendants’ conduct is not accidental. They knowingly disregard stop requests and purposefully use different phone numbers to make it impossible to block new messages,” the complaint says.
The complaint also cites posts other people have made on X.com complaining about WinRed’s texts. A quick search for WinRed on X today shows many more people complaining about the same issues.
“I’m seriously considering filing a class action lawsuit against @WINRED. The sheer amount of campaign txts I receive is astounding,” one person wrote on X. “I’ve unsubscribed from probably thousands of campaign texts to no avail. The scam is, if you call Winred, they say it’s campaign initiated. Call campaign, they say it’s Winred initiated. I can’t be the only one!”
Last month, Democrats on the House Judiciary, Oversight and Administration Committees asked the Treasury Department to provide evidence of “suspicious transactions connected to a wide range of Republican and President Donald Trump-aligned fundraising platforms” including WinRed, Politico reported.
In June 2024, a day after an assassination attempt on Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania, WinRed changed its landing page to all-black with the Trump campaign logo and a black-and-white photograph of Trump raising his fist with blood on his face. “I am Donald J. Trump,” text on the page said. “FEAR NOT! I will always love you for supporting me.”
CNN investigated campaign donation text messaging schemes including WinRed in 2024, and found that the elderly were especially vulnerable to the inflammatory, constant messaging from politicians through text messages begging for donations. And Al Jazeera uncovered FEC records showing people were repeatedly overcharged by WinRed, with one person the outlet spoke to claiming he was charged almost $90,000 across six different credit cards despite thinking he’d only donated small amounts occasionally. “Every single text link goes to WinRed, has the option to ‘repeat your donation’ automatically selected, and uses shady tactics and lies to trick you into clicking on the link,” another donor told Al Jazeera in 2024. “Let’s just say I’m very upset with WinRed. In my view, they are deceitful money-grabbing liars.”
And in 2020, a class action lawsuit against WinRed made similar claims, but was later dismissed.
