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WaPo: How Donald Trump retooled his charity to spend other people’s money

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B

BlastProcessing

Member
In a development that will shock absolutely no one, The Trump Foundation is a complete scam.

Donald Trump was in a tuxedo, standing next to his award: a statue of a palm tree, as tall as a toddler. It was 2010, and Trump was being honored by a charity — the Palm Beach Police Foundation — for his “selfless support” of its cause.

His support did not include any of his own money.
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The Donald J. Trump Foundation is not like other charities. An investigation of the foundation — including examinations of 17 years of tax filings and interviews with more than 200 individuals or groups listed as donors or beneficiaries — found that it collects and spends money in a very unusual manner.

For one thing, nearly all of its money comes from people other than Trump. In tax records, the last gift from Trump was in 2008. Since then, all of the donations have been other people’s money — an arrangement that experts say is almost unheard of for a family foundation.

Trump then takes that money and generally does with it as he pleases. In many cases, he passes it on to other charities, which often are under the impression that it is Trump’s own money.

In two cases, he has used money from his charity to buy himself a gift. In one of those cases — not previously reported — Trump spent $20,000 of money earmarked for charitable purposes to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself.

Money from the Trump Foundation has also been used for political purposes, which is against the law. The Washington Post reported this month that Trump paid a penalty this year to the Internal Revenue Service for a 2013 donation in which the foundation gave $25,000 to a campaign group affiliated with Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi (R).
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Nearly three decades later, the Trump Foundation is still a threadbare, skeletal operation.

The most money it has ever reported having was $3.2 million at the end of 2009. At last count, that total had shrunk to $1.3 million. By comparison, Oprah Winfrey — who is worth $1.5 billion less than Trump, according to a Forbes magazine estimate — has a foundation with $242 million in the bank. At the end of 2014, the Clinton Foundation had $440 million in assets.

In a few cases, Trump seemed to solicit donations only to immediately give them away. But his foundation has also received a handful of bigger donations — including $5 million from professional-wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon — that Trump handed out a little at a time.

The foundation has no paid staffers. It has an unpaid board consisting of four Trumps — Donald, Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr. — and one Trump Organization employee.

In 2014, at last report, each said they worked a half-hour a week.
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The foundation makes a few dozen donations a year, usually in amounts from $1,000 to $50,000. It gives to charities that rent Trump’s ballrooms. It gives to charities whose leaders buttonholed Trump on the golf course (and then try, in vain, to get him to offer a repeat donation the next year).
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In four other cases, The Post found charities that said they never received donations that the Trump Foundation said it gave them.

The amounts were small: $10,000 in 2008, $5,000 in 2010, $10,000 in 2012. Most of the charities had no idea that Trump had said he had given them money.

One did.

This January, the phone rang at a tiny charity in White River Junction, Vt., called Friends of Veterans. This was just after Trump had held a televised fundraiser for veterans in Iowa, raising more than $5 million.

The man on the phone was a Trump staffer who was selecting charities that would receive the newly raised money. He said the Vermont group was already on Trump’s list, because the Trump Foundation had given it $1,000 in 2013.

“I don’t remember a donation from the Trump Foundation,” said Larry Daigle, the group’s president, who was a helicopter gunner with the Army during the Vietnam War. “The guy seemed pretty surprised about this.”

The man went away from the phone. He came back.

Was Daigle sure? He was.

The man thanked him. He hung up. Daigle waited — hopes raised — for the Trump people to call back.

“Oh, my God, do you know how many homeless veterans I could help?” Daigle told The Post this spring, while he was waiting.

Trump gave away the rest of the veterans money in late May.

Daigle’s group got none of it.
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Y

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
Hi-- if you have nothing to post other than some comment about Hillary or Benghazi please don't post. Only warning.
 
D

DragonSworne

Banned
How much trouble can Trump get in for this? Is this one of the things he is being audited for? I'm surprised how long this has been going on for and it hasn't seemed to get him in deep trouble.
 
W

Will M

Member
Didn't he also use foundation money to pay contestants of The Celebrity Apprentice? Well, he paid the charities they sponsored as consolation prizes and made a big deal about he was paying from his own pocket.

Edit: yeah it's totally mentioned in the article.
 
I

iammeiam

Member
Why on earth would they claim money came in from people who didn't donate? That seems hard to write off as a mistake; you'd likely be aware of exactly who is sending in $100,000 checks.
DragonSworne said:
How much trouble can Trump get in for this? Is this one of the things he is being audited for? I'm surprised how long this has been going on for and it hasn't seemed to get him in deep trouble.
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This isn't even related to his personal audit, since none of his own money is involved and it's unlikely he's been trying to claim deductions personally for foundation donations.

It does put his foundation in a potentially bad spot for further misuse of funds for the helmet and painting, and makes it (even more) obvious that he's a fraud who misrepresents and lies any time he can get away with, but it's not what is getting him personally audited.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
So... this is pretty interesting. I've done some work with family foundations before, and some of what they're calling out isn't actually unusual or bad--it's normal for the board to be family members, for example--but some of it is either weird or unethical or outright illegal.

Getting outside donators to help support your family foundation isn't unethical or illegal or even all that unusual, but it is extremely weird if they're the only ones putting any money in, and to me looks like another sign that Trump doesn't have nearly the level of wealth that he claims.

Giving donations to groups after they buttonhole you on the golf course isn't any problem. Giving donations to groups that have a business relationship with you, including renting from you, creates potential self-dealing issues depending on the details (if it's really only renting a ballroom for an event it might not be a large-scale issue, but it still doesn't look good).

Obviously using charitable money for political purposes or buying giant-sized Trump paintings is not ok, but claiming donations that were never actually made is way way worse. That's fraud and could get them in a lot of trouble.

I think that covers most of it.
 
K

kirblar

Member
Cyan said:
Giving donations to groups after they buttonhole you on the golf course isn't any problem. Giving donations to groups that have a business relationship with you, including renting from you, creates potential self-dealing issues depending on the details (if it's really only renting a ballroom for an event it might not be a large-scale issue, but it still doesn't look good).
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Given his campaign's behavior, I'd be surprised if it wasn't a large-scale issue: http://time.com/4462745/donald-trump-tower-campaign-rent/
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
Yeah, but did it take money from foreign governments with terrible human rights records?!?!?!?!?!111111!!

I wish there was a way to take Trump down, but this won't matter.
 
W

whyamihere

Banned
Using a family foundation and other people's money to purchase a giant portrait of himself is the most Trump thing I've ever heard.
 
B

BlastProcessing

Member
Cyan said:
So... this is pretty interesting. I've done some work with family foundations before, and some of what they're calling out isn't actually unusual or bad--it's normal for the board to be family members, for example--but some of it is either weird or unethical or outright illegal.

Getting outside donators to help support your family foundation isn't unethical or illegal or even all that unusual, but it is extremely weird if they're the only ones putting any money in, and to me looks like another sign that Trump doesn't have nearly the level of wealth that he claims.

Giving donations to groups after they buttonhole you on the golf course isn't any problem. Giving donations to groups that have a business relationship with you, including renting from you, creates potential self-dealing issues depending on the details (if it's really only renting a ballroom for an event it might not be a large-scale issue, but it still doesn't look good).

Obviously using charitable money for political purposes or buying giant-sized Trump paintings is not ok, but claiming donations that were never actually made is way way worse. That's fraud and could get them in a lot of trouble.

I think that covers most of it.
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The whole thing feels like a scam where Trump's friends give money to his charity for tax purposes, then Trump turns around and uses that money to further his own agendas. Win, win.

When they get caught he can just blame it all on Meredith McIver or John Barron. Easy peasy.
 
S

Spoiled Milk

Banned
I think the most surprising thing to me, time and time again, is how much Trump projects his own flaws onto his opponent for whom they have no meaning or truth. It absolutely confounds me how little self awareness Trump has in general, but especially about this projection problem in particular. Is it mental illness? What the hell is wrong with him psychologically?

Trump constantly says the Clinton Foundation is a slush fund. Well, this proves that the Trump Foundation is very obviously his personal slush fund.

Trump calls the Clinton Foundation corrupt. Uhh, well Trump has explicitly used this foundation at minimum twice to do actual corrupting (his donations to Pam and Citizens United).

Trump has turned the phrase "pay to play" into a political meme, but the WaPo is saying here that the donations to the Trump Foundation are all suspect, and often tied to business favors and connections. That's really obviously pay to play!

He says that the Clinton Foundation doesn't even do real charity. The falsity of that aside, this article shows that the Trump Foundation hardly has any money, certainly doesn't have any of Trump's money, and is often used for political donations, gift purchases, whatever. Here's a relevant quote:
The foundation makes a few dozen donations a year, usually in amounts from $1,000 to $50,000. It gives to charities that rent Trump’s ballrooms. It gives to charities whose leaders buttonholed Trump on the golf course (and then try, in vain, to get him to offer a repeat donation the next year).
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That's really bad. It isn't even optics, it's just actual badness. In fact, I have to ask: does funding contests or televised giveaways, like Trump's "Trump Pays your Bills!" contest count as charitable giving?! That seems to me to be an abuse of tax laws regarding non-profits, if not actual fraud!

Even more strange projections: Trump likes to claim that the Clintons are personally profiting from the Foundation. That's not true, because the Clintons can't and don't take any salary from their Foundation. But this article says that they can't find records of many small donations the Trump Foundation has made to other charities. That's worth repeating again: the Trump Foundation says that they make charitable, tax deductible donations to smaller charities, but when the editors tried to find out if donations actually happened, it turned out that the receiving charities never got the money. Since there are only four employees that work at the Trump Foundation and they all have his last name, TRUMP IS STEALING MONEY FROM HIS OWN FOUNDATION TO AVOID PAYING TAXES ON IT. FURTHER, THAT MONEY COMES FROM OTHER CHARITABLE DONORS.

DONALD TRUMP IS STEALING MONEY FROM PHILANTHROPISTS BY PRETENDING TO BE A CHARITY. HOLY SHIT?
 
B

BotoxAgent

Member
Stuff like this should automatically disqualify a presidential candidate. Media better step their shit up about this story.
 
O

Ozigizo

Member
“Oh, my God, do you know how many homeless veterans I could help?” Daigle told The Post this spring, while he was waiting.

Trump gave away the rest of the veterans money in late May.

Daigle’s group got none of it.
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So only when it helps him win. Trump is a self-centered asshole. At this point, that foundation only seems useful for bribes and political tributes. How it's still functioning is beyond me.
 
K

kirblar

Member
Ozigizo said:
So only when it helps him win. Trump is a self-centered asshole. At this point, that foundation only seems useful for bribes and political tributes. How it's still functioning is beyond me.
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It never really functioned as anything than a scam to get other people to give him money to use.
 
S

Spoiled Milk

Banned
Hey, uh

Why has it taken the media 15 months to investigate Trump's foundation? Don't you guys think Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would have liked to know about this?

...did the media really fall flat on its face and fail at doing its job this election?
 
D

DontBeThatGuy

Member
You would think think, on top of everything else, this shit would essentially disqualify him, but his supporters(and his "supporters") have zero integrity themselves, so nah.
 
B

Boke1879

Member
Lucreto said:
Is this hitting the media in the US or will it be ignored or downplayed?
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There has been plenty of stories about Trump like this that would have killed any other candidate, but this either isn't talked about or just mentioned briefly. Media is grading Trump on a curve and setting the bar VERY low for him.

Don't expect this to gain any sort of traction.
 
I

iammeiam

Member
Spoiled Milk said:
Hey, uh

Why has it taken the media 15 months to investigate Trump's foundation? Don't you guys think Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would have liked to know about this?

...did the media really fall flat on its face and fail at doing its job this election?
Click to expand...

Some of the more obvious stuff that the foundation itself did has been known for a while--the Bondi donation came to light back in March, for example.

It's worth noting that it's not like a cursory casual investigation turned up all this stuff with minimal due diligence. The general pattern--that Trump hasn't given money to his foundation since 2008, and it's continued to function and hand out other people's money--has been known for a while. The dodgy specifics--the painting, the helmet, that specific donations did or didn't happen--require what amounts to line-by-line manual investigation. The specificity here doesn't originate from an investigation into the foundation itself, but a reporter trying to verify Trump's claims of personal donation absent his tax returns, and the guy's been working on it for months (here's a thing he wrote back in June, for example.)

The specifics of potential actual violations here appear to only be noticed because this one reporter is calling up every charity Trump may have given money and speaking with them--he wrote an article back in July when he found out about the football helmet thing, which I'd argue is an abnormal level of scrutiny when it comes to charity (or at least a level you wouldn't necessarily get to during primaries.)

It's just flat out not normal to have to manually call up hundreds of charities trying to verify donations, so it's unsurprising that it took this long for some of this to come to light.
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
Cyan said:
So... this is pretty interesting. I've done some work with family foundations before, and some of what they're calling out isn't actually unusual or bad--it's normal for the board to be family members, for example--but some of it is either weird or unethical or outright illegal.
Click to expand...
Is it normal for a foundation like this to have zero staff members?

Spoiled Milk said:
Hey, uh

Why has it taken the media 15 months to investigate Trump's foundation? Don't you guys think Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would have liked to know about this?

...did the media really fall flat on its face and fail at doing its job this election?
Click to expand...
WaPo's been investigating Trump's charitable contributions and his foundation for months.

Trump's Republican primary competition simply decided to almost entirely neglect to investigate him, barring some occasional attacks on his bankruptcies and usage of eminent domain.
 
N

Noirulus

Member
Y2Kev said:
Hi-- if you have nothing to post other than some comment about Hillary or Benghazi please don't post. Only warning.
Click to expand...

Can we talk about the Clinton foundation? Wait, so does this mean that we have to consult with the moderators every time we want to post something about Hillary?
 
R

Raxus

Member
Dan said:
Is it normal for a foundation like this to have zero staff members?


WaPo's been investigating Trump's charitable contributions and his foundation for months.

Trump's Republican primary competition simply decided to almost entirely neglect to investigate him, barring some occasional attacks on his bankruptcies and usage of eminent domain.
Click to expand...

New York Times has been digging into the skeletons in Trump's closet as well. It really highlights why you want a candidate to release their tax returns.

(sorry about the lame joke Y2Kev)
Noirulus said:
Can we talk about the Clinton foundation? Wait, so does this mean that we have to consult with the moderators every time we want to post something about Hillary?
Click to expand...

No it was a lame ongoing joke that led to thread derailment and a bunch of deleted posts. If you have an article (and there has been discussion already) then you are free to post it without repercussions.
 
S

Spoiled Milk

Banned
iammeiam said:
Some of the more obvious stuff that the foundation itself did has been known for a while--the Bondi donation came to light back in March, for example.

It's worth noting that it's not like a cursory casual investigation turned up all this stuff with minimal due diligence. The general pattern--that Trump hasn't given money to his foundation since 2008, and it's continued to function and hand out other people's money--has been known for a while. The dodgy specifics--the painting, the helmet, that specific donations did or didn't happen--require what amounts to line-by-line manual investigation. The specificity here doesn't originate from an investigation into the foundation itself, but a reporter trying to verify Trump's claims of personal donation absent his tax returns, and the guy's been working on it for months (here's a thing he wrote back in June, for example.)

The specifics of potential actual violations here appear to only be noticed because this one reporter is calling up every charity Trump may have given money and speaking with them--he wrote an article back in July when he found out about the football helmet thing, which I'd argue is an abnormal level of scrutiny when it comes to charity (or at least a level you wouldn't necessarily get to during primaries.)

It's just flat out not normal to have to manually call up hundreds of charities trying to verify donations, so it's unsurprising that it took this long for some of this to come to light.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that provides a lot of context.

Dan said:
WaPo's been investigating Trump's charitable contributions and his foundation for months.

Trump's Republican primary competition simply decided to almost entirely neglect to investigate him, barring some occasional attacks on his bankruptcies and usage of eminent domain.
Click to expand...
I didn't know this. :(
 
N

Noirulus

Member
Raxus said:
No it was a lame ongoing joke that led to thread derailment and a bunch of deleted posts. If you have an article (and there has been discussion already) then you are free to post it without repercussions.
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Oh, must've missed that. Can you link me the thread?
 
I

iammeiam

Member
rjinaz said:
And why? $20k should be nothing for a billionaire like Trump.
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My favorite part of the Bondi thing is realizing that Trump has a standing order with his accounting office making sure charities are never paid out of his pocket:


In March, Trump's chief financial officer told The Post that a mistake occurred when an accounting clerk — following office protocol — looked in a book that contained a list of all official charities. The clerk's standing order from Trump was that, if the payee was listed in this book of charities, the check should be paid from the Trump Foundation, not from Trump's own account.
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Which makes sense if he's putting money into his charity regularly, but since he hasn't in years it means he's effectively got a standing order that he doesn't give to charity.
 
P

Plasticine

Member
Lucreto said:
Is this hitting the media in the US or will it be ignored or downplayed?
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It'll be downplayed and brushed aside. If it's mentioned, the media will make sure to mention the Clinton Foundation, and speculate about just how corrupt the Clintons really are.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Dan said:
Is it normal for a foundation like this to have zero staff members?
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I'd expect there to at least be an accountant or something. Maybe someone from a Trump organization donating time. Someone's got to be filing taxes and the like.

Otherwise, for a foundation that doesn't seem to do much outside of very occasionally transferring money around, it's not that surprising that they don't have program or grants people working there.
 
R

Randolph Freelander

Member
Taniel ‏@Taniel

That's $120K more than he charged his own campaign—& $270K more than he charged to Pam Bondi

On the night that he won the Palm Tree Award for his philanthropy, Trump may have actually made money. The gala was held at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, and the police foundation paid to rent the room. It’s unclear how much was paid in 2010, but the police foundation reported in its tax filings that it rented Mar-a-Lago in 2014 for $276,463.
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Click to expand...

^
 
N

Noirulus

Member
Fat4all said:
If you got news about The Clinton Foundation, make your own thread. Trump threads constantly get derailed with "but Hillary"s.
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Hillary threads also get constantly derailed with Trump, though. In fact, it's quite a bit worse because we're allowed free reign on calling Trump any insult we want on GAF. Why the double standard?
 
F

Fat4all

Banned
Noirulus said:
Hillary threads also get constantly derailed with Trump, though. In fact, it's quite a bit worse because we're allowed free reign on calling Trump any insult we want on GAF. Why the double standard?
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One mod isn't every mod on GAF. Take it up in them in their PMs.
 
F

False Witness

Member
Noirulus said:
Hillary threads also get constantly derailed with Trump, though. In fact, it's quite a bit worse because we're allowed free reign on calling Trump any insult we want on GAF. Why the double standard?
Click to expand...

You missed the first 10 or so deleted posts which were all, "But *insert Hillary "scandal"*"....
 
Futurematic

Futurematic

Member
Noirulus said:
Hillary threads also get constantly derailed with Trump, though. In fact, it's quite a bit worse because we're allowed free reign on calling Trump any insult we want on GAF. Why the double standard?
Click to expand...

Trump is an idiot? A bigot? A racist? Small hands, too. This is all well documented. It's not an insult if it's true.
 
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