The campaign couldn’t confirm the total received but said that all the money it identified from the white supremacist leader would be donated to the fund.
Holt is president of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a Missouri-based group that is named in a manifesto widely reported to have been written by Roof and posted to a website registered in Roof’s name.
As a result, several Republican presidential candidates announced Monday that they are returning, or directing to charities, campaign donations they have received from Holt.
Holt has since 2012 contributed $8,500 to Cruz, the Texas senator running for the Republican presidential nomination, and his Jobs, Growth and Freedom Fund political action committee, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
The Mother Emanuel Hope Fund was established by Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr.to help pay for the funerals, counseling, and other financial needs of Charleston shooting victims' families.
Walker spokesman AshLee Strong said the donations would be given to an unspecified charity.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremism, describes the CCC as a "white nationalist" group descended from organizations created in the 1950s to defend segregation from the ascendant civil rights movement.
Holt also donated to the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004, and to several current and ex- GOP members of Congress, including Iowa Rep. Steve King, Arizona Sen.
"As I told 5,000 or so members at my local church, where I preached Sunday, the attack in Charleston was an act of pure evil perpetrated against our own brothers and sisters", he said in a statement.
When reached for comment by The Guardian, a spokesman for Cruz said that his campaign and PAC would be making "a full refund" of the Holt donation.
"The CofCC website exists because media either "spike" such stories, or intentionally obscure the race of black offenders", Holt said.
In a statement posted Monday, Holt said he is not surprised that Roof found the council because its site is one of the few that reports "the seemingly endless incidents involving black-on-white kill". "Period. End of sentence", Santorum’s statement said. Another $1,750 was given to Senator Paul’s action committee, and $1,500 was donated to Senator Santorum, who attended Sunday’s memorial service at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina.
Holt made seven $500 contributions to Walker’s gubernatorial campaigns from 2011 to 2014, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s finance database.
Holt has additionally donated to ex- congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, The Guardian stated.
In the late 1990s, the GOP was caught in scandal when it was revealed that Georgia Congressman Bob Barr had delivered an address at the council’s 1998 national meeting and that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi had also spoken to the group a handful of times. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Sen.
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