Hillary Clinton’s campaign is seizing on a new Washington Post investigation into practices of Donald Trump’s charitable foundation, saying its findings prove the Republican nominee is “a fraud who believes the rules don’t apply to him.”
The Post’s David Fahrenthold reported Tuesday that Trump has spent $258,000 from his family charity to settle lawsuits involving his businesses, a potential violation of laws against “self-dealing.”
In one instance, Trump settled a dispute with Palm Beach, Fla., over the height of a flagpole at his Mar-a-Lago Club with a donation to a veterans charity from his foundation, which the report says is funded by other people's money. Trump’s attorneys said in a filing in federal court that a smaller American flag “would fail to appropriately express the magnitude of Donald J. Trump’s ... patriotism.”
Trump also spent $10,000 of foundation funds on a portrait of himself at a charity fundraiser in 2014, according to the Post’s report. Years earlier, he'd used $20,000 from the foundation on a different portrait, the report says.
“Clearly the Trump Foundation is as much a charitable organization as Trump University is an institute of higher education,” Clinton campaign spokesperson Christina Reynolds said in a statement in which the campaign reiterated its demand for Trump to release his tax returns.
“Trump’s version of charity is taking money from others to settle his own legal issues and buy at least two pictures of himself, which experts say is a clear violation of laws governing charitable organizations.”