Washington Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold has been digging into purported billionaire Donald Trump’s purported charity and unearths a heck of a story: Trump used $258,000 from his ‘charitable’ non-profit organization to settle legal problems involving his for-profit businesses.
“The settlements were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses,” Fahrenthold writes.
According to Fahrehthold’s deep dive into Trump’s dirty deals, the repugnantly racist and sexist Republican presidential nominee spent more than a quarter million dollars of funds belonging to his charitable foundation “to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses.” The reporting is based on interviews with primary sources, and a review of legal documents.
From the Washington Post article, which every voter should read in full:
Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.
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, a charity funded almost entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.
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, according to tax records.
The devil is in the details, and boy can you see a lot of bedevilment in these details.
“Trump used $258,000 from his charity to settle legal problems” [washingtonpost.com]