TRUMP USES HIS OWN CHARITY’S MONEY FOR HIMSELF

…A caricature of a caricature

 

Per an attorney for nom-profits about Trump’s actions: “I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen!”

 

We’ve all heard the Trumpster declare during the primaries that he was paying his own way through the campaigns.  But one of the areas that has not been discussed is that during all of Trump’s campaigning, he is using all of his properties and his Trump branded products in support of his campaign.  The RNC is paying the Trump organization for all the use of Trump properties and Trump branded products.

 

As examples, he flies around in his own private, 757 jet and he always stays at Trump properties when he travels in his campaigns.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone that everthing from his jet costs to Trump bottled waters and other Trump give-away items are all items that the RNC and the campaign has to pay Trump’s organization for every day of the campaign.

 

So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we now know that Trump has used uses other people’s charity money also or himself.

 

The Washington Post has now reported that, “Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses.”  This is according to The Post’s interviews and a review of legal documents.

 

According to the records, Trump used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, and this may have violated laws against “self-dealing”.  This law prohibits nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.

 

Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, inadvertently made a major gaffe.  She accidently told the truth.  She did so when she said that the Trump’s foundation’s money was Trump’s money.  She perfectly reflected Trump’s attitude, but it is truthfully and grossly unethical and definitely illegal.

 

And this revelation is just added to the one where he used $20,000 of the charity foundation’s money to buy a 6-foot-tall portrait of himself, and he paid a $2,500 fine to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for illegally using foundation money to give Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) a political donation.

 

The IRS has been informed about this and the agency could require him to pay penalty taxes or to reimburse the foundation for all the money it spent on his behalf.

 

But for the campaign, these cases just provide more new evidence that Trump ran his charity in a way that may have violated US tax law and he has gone against the moral conventions of real philanthropy.

 

I have to give Hillary credit for her comments about this revelation on Trump.  Per Hillary, “Clearly the Trump Foundation is as much a charitable organization as Trump University is an institute of higher education. 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.”  Her statement continued: “Once again, Trump has proven himself a fraud who believes the rules don’t apply to him. It’s past time for him to release his tax returns to show whether his tax issues extend to his own personal finances.”

 

I would suspect that Hillary will start using this information as a way to talk to those Trump supporters who think Trump is on their side.

 

The truth is that Trump is never on anyone’s side but Trump’s. That is the lesson of Trump University and the Trump foundation.  Trump’s refusal to pay small-business people, his litigiousness, his use of eminent domain to take ordinary people’s property for his own benefit, his use of tragedies to advance his own interests and his tax plan that is another giveaway to the rich.

 

Under the guise of being a generous benefactor, he uses other people, and other people’s money to enrich and elevate himself.

 

In the first debate, I am hoping the viewers come away with the understanding that Trump is not on their side.

 

The question I have for anyone wanting to vote for Donald J. Trump.  “Once elected, does anyone imagine he would really cut ties to his business?”  “Does anyone think he would favor legislation that harms his real estate business?”

 

We know that Trump puts his business and legal interests ahead of the American voters. That is the real reason why he won’t release his taxes.  To do so, would not be good for him; and the voters be damned. And now we know he puts his own legal interests above charitable causes by taking money intended for them and using it for himself.

 

Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a lawyer who advises charities at a law firm in Washington DC said it best.  “I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen.  If he’s using other people’s money, running it through his foundation to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I’ve seen in a while.”

 

What scares me is that if the IRS and the FBI aren’t already investigating Trump, if he wins in November, they never will investigate.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016