GREENWICH – President Joe Biden returned to this upscale community Monday night for a major fundraiser to fill his campaign coffers and ripped into Republican Donald J. Trump in their bitter battle for the presidency.

With only five months remaining before the election, Biden told a partisan crowd that Trump is not fit to be president and is “unhinged” because he cannot accept that he lost the 2020 race. He sharply criticized Trump for being convicted by a jury last week of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in connection with paying $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels for her silence during the 2016 campaign.

“It’s reckless and dangerous and downright irresponsible for anyone to say that’s rigged just because they don’t like the verdict,” Biden told the wealthy crowd under a large tent in Greenwich’s famed “backcountry” neighborhood.

“The threat Trump poses would be greater in a second term than in his first,” Biden said. “This isn’t the same Trump from 2016. He’s worse. Something snapped in this guy for real. … He can’t accept the fact that he lost.”

“He says he wants to be dictator for one day,” Biden said. “Trump says if he loses again in November – his words – there will be a bloodbath. My God, what kind of a man is this?”

In the same fashion, Trump has blasted Biden – calling him the worst president in American history and blaming him for inflation that has been dubbed as Bidenflation. Trump adds that Biden “can’t put two sentences together” and is “destroying our country.”

The two bitter rivals will have their first debate in front of millions of viewers on CNN on June 27 – far earlier than traditional presidential debates that are held in the fall.

Fundraising

Biden needs millions of dollars in his heated rematch against Trump, where some polls have shown a dead heat and others have shown Trump in the lead. Some Democrats have been stunned that the race is still tight after Trump has been impeached twice and indicted four times on felony charges in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. A jury in Manhattan last week found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for paying $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in a high-profile trial that was covered on a minute-to-minute basis by cable television networks.

A big question among Democrats has been how much Biden should blast Trump for the felony convictions or whether he should try to remain above the fray.

He noted Monday night that he had nothing to do with the investigation.

“It was a state case, even though he says Biden set this up,” Biden told the crowd.

$30,000 for photo in Greenwich

In Greenwich, Democrats gathered at the nearly 15-acre estate of Richard Plepler, the former chief executive officer of Home Box Office. The estate is described as “one of Greenwich’s finest.”

The invitation, which was obtained by The Courant, did not list any prices for attendance, but the minimum was $3,300 per person.

The fundraiser was sold out at various price points. The tickets were so hot that some attendees were double-checked if they would be arriving so that someone else could be pulled off the waiting list to replace a no-show, Democrats said.

A photo with Biden started at $30,000 for an individual and were sold out, according to the price list. Those in the category of “host” were required to contribute or donate $100,000, while co-hosts raised $50,000. For $10,000, two people would get preferred seating, and those, too, were sold out, Democrats said.

Following past practice, the Biden campaign did not release details on the number of donors or how much was raised at the event.

Gov. Ned Lamont, though, said organizers were hoping to raise more than the total that was raised at his home in October 2019, which was reported at more than $450,000.

“In Connecticut, President Biden is running strong,” Lamont said. “Nationwide, in those battleground states, they’re very close.”

Regarding the hush money trial in New York, some Republicans have said that the outcome of the trial would not change the minds of Trump supporters nor those who strongly oppose Trump.

“Look, there’s the legal judgement of the jury,” Lamont said recently. “They know the law better than I do. Then there’s a character judgement that people are going to make. There’s no question that he paid off a porn star to stay silent. You can make your own judgements on that type of person.”

Virtually the entire leadership of the state Democratic Party rallied behind the Biden fundraiser and were listed on the invitation: Lamont, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, and more than a dozen others. The list also included Shonda Rhimes, a famed television producer who created “Grey’s Anatomy” and was named three times by Time magazine as among the world’s 100 most influential people.

The invitation, which was obtained by the Courant, did not mention the address of the fundraiser. But it was held down the street from the former Gimbel estate, which was owned for nearly 60 years by the famed department store family that competed against rival Macy’s in the heyday of retailers in New York and beyond. The original 200-acre estate had a spectacular 26-room main house, but the property was sold in 1986 and eventually subdivided to handle about 25 new luxury homes.

After landing at nearby Westchester County Airport, which is only minutes away from the fundraiser, Biden’s schedule called for 2 hours and 15 minutes on the ground before taking off once again for the White House.

State Republican chairman Ben Proto says he does not see much political impact from Trump’s hush money trial in which prosecutors charged that business records were falsified to cover up a payment to Daniels during the 2016 election campaign.

“I think the people who support Donald Trump are going to continue to support Donald Trump, and the people who don’t support Donald Trump are going to continue to not support Donald Trump,” Proto said recently. “I don’t think it’s going to change a great deal of minds one way or the other.”

Trump

Trump’s campaign announced that he will be holding a town hall meeting Thursday afternoon in Arizona with conservative Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point Action.

“President Trump has proven time and again that he is an absolute force of nature that the left fears more than any other,” Kirk said in a statement from the Trump campaign. “They know Joe Biden can’t beat him in a fair fight, so they’ve disgracefully weaponized the justice system. But those attacks are failing. Arizonans see the true threat to democracy, and Trump’s movement is at record levels.”

Kirk added that Trump is leading Biden in multiple polls in Arizona, a traditionally conservative state that was the home of Republican U.S. Senators Barry Goldwater and John McCain.

“The American people know we cannot survive four more years of Joe Biden and look to President Donald J. Trump to make America great again!” Kirk said.

Previous Greenwich fundraisers

Biden was most recently in Greenwich in June 2023 at the home of Stephen Mandel Jr., a longtime hedge fund manager who founded Lone Pine Capital in 1997. Public records show that he contributed $1 million in 2020 to the Lincoln Project, which is operated by former Republican strategists who helped blocked Trump’s attempt at reelection.

Mandel, whose name was on the latest Biden invitation, said at his home : “As Americans, we all owe a big thanks to the president for what he’s done the last two years.”

Biden also headlined a major fundraiser at Lamont’s home in October 2019 when Biden was still a candidate and had not gained major momentum that came with his victory in South Carolina in 2020. The event raised more than $450,000 and ranked at the time as one of the most successful fundraisers for the Biden campaign nationwide.

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com