First off, if you're not following the phenomenal work of David Fahrenthold, the writer who has doggedly pursued this story when no one else would, you need to: Twitter and WaPo page
Background
The Trump Foundation was formed in 1987 and initially funded with proceeds from The Art of the Deal. It was never a very prolific organization, nor one that Donald himself seemed to have much interest in:
Between 1987 and 2006, Trump gave $5.4 million to his foundation with the vast majority of the money going out the door quickly to a range of fairly banal nonprofits. It never amassed a large war chest, and by the start of 2007 it had just $4,238 in assets...Trump’s donations trickled in 2007 and 2008, and from 2009 onward Trump has given no money to the Foundation
Trump has remained at the helm, however, flanked by three of his children and his CFO
the Foundation [never hired] professional staff or independent directors, relying instead on unpaid work by a five-person board composed of Trump himself, his daughter Ivanka, his sons Eric and Donald, and Allen Weisselberg, the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Foundation. Tiffany Trump did not make the cut for some reason.
Their work ethic leaves something to be desired
In 2014, at last report, each said they worked a half-hour a week.
So he bestows honorific board titles to his kids and doesn't give to his own foundation - who cares?
Well apparently, Trump has been using the Trump Foundation as a tax-free source of cash; he accepts donations from other people and organizations and then turns around and spends it as if it came from his own checking account. This has manifested itself in several ways.
First, Trump likes to accept donations and then dole them back out and act as if the money was his own. For example, Trump approached the Charles Evans Foundation and asked for a donation, saying he was raising money for the Palm Beach Police Foundation:
The Evans Foundation said yes. In 2009 and 2010, it gave a total of $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation...
Then, Trump’s foundation turned around and made donations to the police group in South Florida. In those years, the Trump Foundation’s gifts totaled $150,000.
Trump had effectively turned the Evans Foundation’s gifts into his own gifts, without adding any money of his own.
Trump was awarded the Palm Tree Award for his "philanthropy."
Hilariously, Trump billed the Palm Beach Police Foundation $276,463 to use a room at Mar-a-Lago for a gala, which means he effectively made a quarter of a million dollars off an organization that thought he had donated $150,000 to them.
You're telling me you've never taken credit for someone else's work?
Taken credit for a school project? Sure. Stolen $258,000 of someone else's money and used it to pay legal fees? That's thievery that is Trumpian in magnitude:
In one case, from 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Fla., resulting from a dispute over the size of a flagpole.
In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines — if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation
In another case, court papers say one of Trump’s golf courses in New York agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff’s chosen charity. A $158,000 donation was made by the Trump Foundation
In other words, Donald Trump the businessman was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money and he instead turned to his slush fund charity foundation, found a donation that was given by someone in the hopes it would be put to good use, and paid his fines.
A huge mistake? Sure. But we've all made one or two mistakes we're not proud of
He's done this multiple times.
In case you're keeping track, that's 10-feet of Trump and $30,000 worth of charitable donations going towards paintings.
Okay, none of that sounds great, but surely he gives to somebody, right?
You'd think so, given how much Trump has bragged about his penchant for philanthropy.
But there are at least four cases of the Trump Foundation claiming to have donated money to a charity and then never following through: Giving Back Fund, Children’s Medical Center in Omaha, the Latino Commission on AIDS, and Friends of Veterans.
Furthermore, Fahrenthold has contacted over 250 organizations with some tie to Trump and has found exactly one donation from Trump himself:
So far, The Post's search has turned up little. Between 2008 and this May — when Trump made good on a pledge to give $1 million to a veterans' group — its search has identified just one personal gift from Trump's own pocket
Whatever, he was a private citizen, I'm voting for Trump the politician
Funny you should mention that, because it turns out that when he's not buying paintings of himself or paying legal fees with charity donations, he's funding political campaigns and legal cases against political opponents!
This is very important: as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Trump Foundation is strictly prohibited from engaging in political activity - any political activity.
However, Trump personally signed a check for $25,000 from the Trump Foundation to a super PAC that supported Florida AG Pam Bondi which is illegal - Trump was forced to pay a fine and reimburse his own charity. The donation, as well as a subsequent fundraiser he held for Bondi, have raised allegations of pay-for-play; Bondi's office was looking into allegations that Trump U was a scam. Efforts by the Trump campaign to dismiss the story have raised more questions:
A staff that prides itself on rarely apologizing admitted to a remarkable series of errors. In interviews, the Trump braintrust–Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization and treasurer of the Foundation, and other Trump executives –gave an intricate explanation of how they occurred. Shortly after Bondi asked Trump for a contribution, they said, a request for payment arrived at Trump’s headquarters in September, 2013. The clerk who received the RFP didn’t recognize the name And Justice For All, and mistook it for a charity. He was under a standing order to verify that charities requesting donations were bona fide by checking their names in an official registry.
The clerk found a charity with the same name, And Justice for All, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and wrote a $25,000 check from the Trump Foundation to that And Justice for All. But the funds didn’t go to the anti-abortion group in Utah that provides legal assistance for people with disabilities. Instead, the check went to the pro-Bondi PAC in Tampa.
The Trump staff was unable to explain why, if the money was intended for the Wichita charity, it was mailed to a different address in Florida.
The Trump Foundation has also given hundreds of thousands of dollars away at Trump campaign events, raising questions as to whether it is truly a stand-alone nonprofit charity or if it is now effectively functioning as a wing of the Trump campaign.
This story is evolving literally by the day as more and more evidence is uncovered of yet another fraudulent Trump enterprise. If anyone asks you why this is a big deal, think about this: If Trump is willing to scam friends of his who have donated money to his Foundation in the hopes that it will go towards some worthwhile charity, what will he as the head of a country of 350,000,000 taxpaying strangers?
ここには何もないようです