‘A wise investment’: Trump’s $6,000 gift to Kamala Harris comes back to bite him

Donald Trump has moved swiftly to turn his attack machine on to the vice-president in the wake of Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race, dusting off his derisive nickname for her: “Laffin’ Kamala Harris”.

But as the Republican nominee refocuses his campaign to target Harris, there is one awkward truth that Trump will have to face. What about that check for $5,000 dated 26 September 2011, bearing Trump’s distinctive signature, and made payable to “Re-elect Attorney General Kamala D Harris 2014”?

Within hours of Biden’s historic decision breaking on Sunday, and with a new possible Trump v Harris battle heaving into view, Trump’s uncomfortable donation resurfaced on social media. Jared Moskowitz, a Democratic congressman from Florida, posted a photo of the check on his X feed with the words: “Was a wise investment.”

Michael Steele, former chair of the Republican National Committee, snarked : “When Trump wrote that check to re-elect Kamala Harris in 2011, I bet he didn’t think she’d cash it in 2024!”

In fact, the $5,000 donation was just one of several gifts from the Trump family to Harris at the time when she was working as California’s top prosecutor. Records held by the California secretary of state note the largest $5,000 donation, but also give details of a further $1,000 check from Trump to Harris from February 2013 at the start of her re-election campaign as the state’s attorney general.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka is also listed on the database as having given Harris $2,000 for her re-election committee in June 2014.

Related: Trump leads Republican taunts of Biden after president drops out of 2024 race

The existence of $8,000 of Trump money wending its way into Harris’s political coffers may hound Trump on the campaign trail, just as it did during the 2020 presidential campaign when she was Biden’s running mate. Then, Fox News uncovered details of how the $5,000 donation came about.

Digging into court documents, the channel reported that Trump had made the payment at the request of New York’s then top prosecutor, Eric Schneiderman, who held a fundraiser for Harris in September 2011. Trump was persuaded to buy a ticket for the event at the top price of $5,000, with Ivanka attending.

Trump insisted that the fact that he did this favour for Schneiderman, who was later disgraced after he was accused of physically abusing several women, had nothing to do with the investigation that was then ongoing into Trump University.

Contrary to Steele’s quip on social media, Harris will not be able to spend the $5,000 on her 2024 presidential campaign, should she secure the Democratic nomination. As the Sacramento Bee reported in 2020, she gave away the entire $6,000 he had given her as she began her run for the US Senate, bequeathing it to a civil rights non-profit working in Central America.

• This article was amended on 23 July 2024 to clarify the wording on the check for $5,000 to the Harris 2014 re-election campaign.