Trump tells GOP committees to stop using his name for fundraising

Former President Donald Trump demanded that the Republican National Committee (RNC) and two GOP campaign organizations stop using his name and likeness for fundraising, on Friday, according to a report from Politico. Trump lawyers reportedly sent cease and desist orders not just to the RNC, but the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which are spearheading Republican efforts to retake the Senate and the House in the 2022 midterms, respectively.

The cease and desist effort comes less than a week after Trump’s first major post-presidency speech, at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Orlando, Florida. Trump used his keynote address there not just to reassert his leadership of the party that has twice nominated him for president, but to float a potential 2024 run for president, and to call out by name the 10 Republican representatives who voted to impeach him for inciting insurrection in January.

“There’s only one way to contribute to our efforts to elect America-first Republican conservatives and in turn to make America great again, and that’s through Save America PAC and donaldjtrump.com,” he told supporters at CPAC last weekend.

As of Saturday, however, the RNC doesn’t appear to have been deterred. According to Politico’s Alex Isenstadt, the committee sent out a fundraising email invoking Trump’s agenda even after the cease and desist orders went out.

But Trump is also facing a unique set of post-presidential challenges that could complicate that plan — namely, a whole bunch of potential legal problems. At the very least, he’s facing ongoing criminal investigations by district attorneys in Manhattan and Fulton County, Georgia, and New York Attorney General Letitia James is also leading a civil investigation into potential fraud by the Trump Organization.