Donald Trump once donated to Kamala Harris’ campaign. Here’s what she did with the money.

As Vice President Kamala Harris vies for the Democratic presidential nomination following President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 race, some social media users are calling attention to a donation she received nearly 13 years ago from former President Donald Trump.

A July 21 Threads post included a photo of a $5,000 check Trump wrote in September 2011 to Harris’ California attorney general reelection campaign. The post said, "A donation (Harris) returned."

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

(Screengrab from Threads)

Although it’s correct that Trump, then a private citizen and now the Republican presidential nominee, donated to Harris’ attorney general campaign, the post misleads about what Harris did with the money.

Following his 2011 donation, Trump gave an additional $1,000 to Harris’ campaign in February 2013. Trump’s daughter Ivanka also donated $2,000 to Harris’ campaign in June 2014, California campaign finance records show.

A spokesperson for Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign told McClatchy in 2019 that Harris donated the $6,000 from Donald Trump to "a nonprofit that advocates for civil and human rights for Central Americans." This donation was made in 2015, after Harris was reelected as California’s attorney general in 2014. California campaign finance records confirm this.

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stated on September 9, 2018 in a website post

Says Barack Obama "referred to the carnage that took place in Benghazi as a conspiracy theory."  

In July 2015, records show, Harris’ campaign gave $6,000 in "civic donations" to the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles.

When we contacted Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign for more information, a spokesperson referred us to the McClatchy report. The article didn’t say what Harris did with the $2,000 from Ivanka Trump.

After Harris became Biden’s running mate in 2020, a spokesperson for Biden’s presidential campaign told The Washington Post that Harris did not solicit these donations from Donald Trump.

Donating the money from Trump to a nonprofit is not the same as returning it. We rate this claim False.