PRESIDENT’S “TRUMP FOUNDATION” WAS USED AS TRUMP’S “PIGGY BANK”

…Barbara Underwood:  New York Attorney General

Per New York Attorney General: We found “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation!”

President Trump had no choice but to agree to shut down his personal charity.  He also agreed to give away its remaining money because he had used the foundation for his personal and political benefit.  This was stated by the New York Attorney General, Barbara Underwood.

Underwood said that the Donald J. Trump Foundation is dissolving, while her office pursues its lawsuit against: the charity, Donald Trump and all three of his eldest children.

The suit alleged “persistently illegal conduct” at the foundation, and it sought to have the so called “charity” shut down.  Underwood is continuing to seek more than $2.8 million in restitution and has asked a judge to ban all of the Trumps temporarily from serving on any boards of other New York, non-profit organizations.

Underwood said that her investigation found “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation, including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much, much more.”

“This is an important victory for the rule of law, making clear that there is one set of rules for everyone,” Underwood added in a statement.

The Washington Post had previously documented illegal actions at the foundation. Trump had used the charity’s money to pay legal settlements for his private business; to purchase art for himself and for one of his golf clubs; and to make an illegal political donation.

In late 2016, Trump knew he was being investigated and he had said he wanted to close the foundation.  However, the New York attorney general blocked that move while it was leading the investigation.

The settlement with Underwood’s office now represents a concession by Trump to a state investigation.  (Similar to his $25 Million settlement for closing the Trump University debacle.) Of course, as always, Trump decried the investigation as a partisan attack.  However, the case is one of over 12 legal investigations of all of Trump’s organizations that have proliferated since 2016.  A lawyer for the Trump Organization declined to comment.

Underwood said that the foundation’s remaining $1.75 million would be distributed to other charities approved by her office and a state judge.  (The state is still asking for an additional $1 million that was misused by the Trump's.)

The attorney general’s suit shows that Trump used this charity’s money as his own piggy bank.  He even used it to help his presidential campaign by paying for his giveaways at his campaign rallies.  “The Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments to other organizations from Mr. Trump or the Trump Organization,” Underwood wrote in the initial suit.

The Trump Foundation was never an impressive part of Trump’s portfolio.  At its peak, in 2009, it had only about $3.2 million in the bank.  That is a very small sum for a so called “billionaire’s charity organization”.

The really disgusting part is that Trump used the money not only for himself, but the foundation used other people’s donations to build up the foundation’s assets.  In recent years, the largest gifts came from the pro-wrestling moguls, Vince and Linda McMahon, not from Trump.

Trump gave away the Foundation’s money in his name and also used the Foundation to pay his business’s legal settlements. Federal law prohibits using charity money for personal gain.

The Post’s reporting showed that for years, Trump appeared to treat the Foundation as a checkbook for gifts that bolstered his interests.  But by law, it was supposed to be an independent operation.

The largest donation in the Foundation’s history was a $264,231 gift to the Central Park Conservancy in 1989.  But this donation actually was to benefit Trump’s business.

That’s because it paid to restore a fountain just outside Trump’s Plaza Hotel in New York.  

The smallest donation was also for the Trump family benefit.  It was a $7.00 Foundation gift to the Boy Scouts of America.  That gift was the amount required to enroll a boy in the Boy Scouts.  That $7.00 “gift” was for Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr’s. enrollment when he was only 11.

But what was even more disgusting was that the attorney general’s investigation also turned up evidence that Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, were all listed as officers of the charity, but they had never held a board meeting.  The board actually hadn’t met since 1999.  The charity’s official treasurer, Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg, told investigators that he wasn’t even aware that he was listed as being on the Foundation’s BOD.  When the state investigators asked him what the Foundation’s policies were to determine whether its payments were proper, Weisselberg responded: “There is no policy, just so you understand.”

At one point, Trump used the charity’s money to make a $25,000 political campaign donation to Florida Attorney General, Pamela Bondi (R).  The charity also didn’t tell the IRS about that money, which is required.   They instead listed that donation as a gift to an unrelated charity in Kansas with a similar name.  Trump’s team continues to blame that payment on accounting mistakes.

During the 2016 campaign, state investigators said, “Trump effectively ceded control of his charity to his political campaign.”  He had raised more than $2 million at a fundraiser in Iowa that flowed directly into the Trump Foundation. Then, the Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was the one to determine when and where the money would be given away.  “Is there any way we can make some disbursements . . . this week, while in Iowa?” Lewandowski wrote in an email cited in Underwood’s lawsuit.

There are many pictures of Trump giving away oversize checks from the foundation at campaign events in the key early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, pausing at his campaign rallies to donate to local veterans’ groups.

However, the Federal laws prohibit charities from participating in any political campaigns.  Of course, President Trump has called upon Congress repeatedly, for that law to be repealed.

Unfortunately, the loss of the Trump Foundation does leave us one mystery.  Whatever became of the large portrait of Trump that the future president bought for $20,000 in 2007, using money from the charity.  What became of it is unknown.

In 2017, The Post wrote about the portrait, as Trump had listed it as an asset on his charity’s IRS forms. 

At that time, he assigned it a value of $700, but he did not say where it was.

However, on this year’s tax forms, the painting’s value was listed at $0.00.

Trump’s attorney did not respond to a question from The Post about where the painting was and why it went from $20,000 to $0.00.

Copyright G. Ater 2018