Annapolis, MD—Three weeks after Democrats called on Larry Hogan to donate more than $100,000 raised by Donald Trump to boost his re-election bid, the Republican governor is still holding on to his Tainted Trump Cash. In the wake of Donald Trump’s #TreasonSummit with Vladimir Putin yesterday, the Maryland Democratic Party is renewing its call for Hogan to donate his Trump Cash to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a nonprofit helping to reunite families that have been ripped apart by Trump’s family separation policy at the border.
“After Donald Trump chose to stand with Vladimir Putin over America, Larry Hogan needs to stand with Maryland over Trump and donate his Tainted Trump Cash to a worthy cause,” said Maryland Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Matthews. “Marylanders want to see real distance between their governor and a President who continues to put Americans at risk, whether it’s ripping children away from their parents at our borders or compromising the security of our elections. Donating the Tainted Trump Cash is the right thing to do.”
One week after Donald Trump delivered a hate-filled anti-immigrant speech to launch his presidential campaign, he was the keynote speaker at the Maryland Republican Party’s annual gala. The event was described as a “great success” attended by hundreds of Maryland Republicans—the largest turnout in at least a decade. Trump himself bragged during his speech that “this was some great event, with some great amount of money raised.”
Larry Hogan’s campaign staff, including senior leadership, are now being paid by the party—making Hogan a direct beneficiary of Trump’s blockbuster fundraiser. In light of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies reaching “rock bottom” with his latest human rights crisis, Hogan must stand with Marylanders against Donald Trump and donate the money to charity.
From the moment Donald Trump rode down the escalator at Trump tower and launched his campaign for president, he has sowed division and fear with his hateful immigrant bashing.
As president, Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has become anti-immigrant policies, and Hogan has supported many of them:
- Last month, Hogan revealed that he secretly deployed four Maryland National Guard servicemembers to the U.S.-Mexico border, even though MDNG denied it had received “any request for assistance” when Trump announced his plan to deploy the National Guard to the border in April.
- Last year,The Baltimore Sun discovered Hogan was secretly helping the Trump administration enforce its immigration policies. Despite Hogan’s claims that Maryland was not detaining immigrants on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Sun reported that Baltimore Central Booking—which is operated by the state—received and honored dozens of detention requests from ICE. The investigation also found that many of the requests were for low-level crimes and misdemeanors, not serious or violent crimes.
- While Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has refused to honor ICE’s immigrant detention requests, Hogan said not honoring the requests would be “absurd,” and promised that state police will “detain people for 48 hours so that ICE has the ability to come in and do whatever action they want to take.”
- When Marylanders flooded Hogan’s Facebook page requesting he join them at airports to protest Trump’s Muslim Ban, Hogan deleted their comments and banned them from his page, and then refused to grant Attorney General Brian Frosh authority to fight the ban in court.