Sure, Donald Trump paid off officials to look the other way, but it wasn’t just inaction that he bought. One of Trump’s biggest scores was directly paying a politician to give him tax breaks.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave at least $45,000 to the campaign of Alan Hevesi, a New York state comptroller who later went to prison for his role in a pay-to-play bribery scandal, according to a Huffington Post review of campaign finance records.
That contribution resulted in some very serious returns on the Trump side. Trump got a break so big, he bragged about it in one of the books he paid someone to write.
The city reduced the tax assessment for Trump’s newest building by 17 percent and awarded the building a special tax abatement. In exchange, Trump agreed to subsidize 200 units of affordable housing in the Bronx. The settlement saved Trump $97 million in taxes he didn’t have to pay, he later wrote in Trump: How To Get Rich.
A $97 million return on a $45,000 investment is pretty good in anyone’s book.
Not only was this $45,000 among the largest checks Trump ever cut to a politician—along with those dispatched to Pam Bondi and AG-on-the-way-to-governor Greg Abbott—there are some common features between the Hevesi payoff and those in Florida and Texas.
The $45,000 to Hevesi “was very much out of character for Trump at the time,” Barrett told The Huffington Post. “I have no doubt that Trump had some sort of a reason to give, something he wanted.”
The timing of Trump’s lawsuit coincides almost exactly with the donations to Hevesi.
Trump had a lawsuit problem, he made a payment, problem solved. Trump had a lawsuit problem, he made a payment, problem solved. Trump had a lawsuit problem, he made a payment, problem solved.
It worked right up until Trump encountered Eric Schneiderman, where he was forced to try other tactics.
Donald Trump’s charitable foundation gave $100,000 in 2014 to a conservative activist group that was used to help finance a federal lawsuit against New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — the same public official who was suing the real estate mogul for fraud over the operations of Trump University.
The biggest political payment Donald Trump made—illegally—out of his foundation, was to try and beat Schneiderman. It didn’t work. Not only was Schneiderman re-elected, not only is he moving forward on the Trump University lawsuit, he’s also broadening his case.
On September 13, Eric Schneiderman, the New York State Attorney who is leading the lawsuit against Trump University, stated that his office is now investigating the Donald J. Trump Foundation. “We have been concerned that the Trump Foundation many have engaged in some impropriety,” Schneiderman told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “My interest in this is in my capacity as regulator of non-profits in New York State.”
After the latest revelations about Trump’s foundations, Schneiderman may have to expand his staff.
And of course, like anyone standing up to Trump, Schneiderman faces totally not deplorable feedback.
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