President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee have chosen a fundraising system that profits a former White House staffer and a company invested in by Jared Kushner’s brother ― passing over a cheaper platform that already has contracts with thousands of GOP candidates and committees. “I am pleased to announce the launch of http://tmagac.winred.com. This new platform will allow my campaign and other Republicans to compete with the Democrats money machine,” Trump announced via Twitter late last month. “This has been a priority of mine and I’m pleased to share that it is up and running!” What Trump’s announcement did not mention was that the decision to use “WinRed” will potentially funnel millions of extra dollars to a firm owned by Gerrit Lansing, a former RNC staffer who left his White House job only three weeks into the administration after reportedly failing his FBI background screening. “The victor is always the Trump family and their immediate friends,” said Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP political consultant who has become a prominent Trump critic.﻿

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Trump and the RNC said they hoped WinRed would be used by Republican candidates at both the federal and state levels to lower fundraising costs, just as ActBlue has been able to do for Democratic candidates for over a decade. “WinRed is building infrastructure to unify and modernize Republican fundraising for years to come,” RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a news release. “WinRed will help Republicans up and down the ballot to more creatively and efficiently raise campaign dollars online, direct resources where they are needed most, and most importantly win elections in 2020 and beyond.” This week, the RNC sent a cease-and-desist letter to Anedot, a company that has been used by non-profit groups, candidates and committees of both parties for over a decade, to stop it from using RNC, GOP and the party’s “Official Elephant Logo” on its web site or in its emails to customers. Anedot’s founder, Paul Dietzel, is trying to market a separate, Republican-specific platform ― Give.gop ― as a competitor to WinRed. RNC spokesman Mike Reed said that Anedot’s history of working with Democrats played into the RNC’s decision not to use it. “It obviously makes more sense for the RNC to work with a platform that is aligned completely with the Republican Party and the president,” he said. Dietzel said in a statement: “I’m focused on innovating and continuing to serve our tens of thousands of customers around the country. As I’ve said before, we welcome free-market competition.” WinRed actually uses the payment processing system operated by Revv.com, a company Lansing founded even as he simultaneously worked at the RNC running its digital operation in 2015 and 2016. In his brief stint working for Trump, he served as the White House’s chief digital officer. Lansing did not respond to HuffPost queries to Revv.com or WinRed. A HuffPost analysis of Federal Election Commission records shows that Revv had only 17 different federal candidates and committees as clients from 2015 to today, including three affiliated with Trump. Those three accounted for $3.5 million of Revv’s $3.8 million in revenues, or 91%, from federal elections in that time period. In contrast, Anedot had 1,051 federal elections clients in that time period, and received $11 million in revenues, the analysis found. “When the free market doesn’t work, you try force,” a GOP strategist familiar with both platforms said on condition of anonymity. Trump and his allies “are definitely trying to bully and strong-arm people to stop using a product used by the masses for years and instead use a product that people have basically rejected for four years.”

The victor is always the Trump family and their immediate friends Rick Wilson, Republican political consultant and Trump critic.