Vanity Fair - OH JESUS: DID TRUMP REALLY SKIM CHARITY MONEY FROM KIDS WITH CANCER? [View all]

[TomCADem]

Given Trump's demands that the FBI look into the charitable activities of prominent politicians, will the media ask Trump about his own foundation's checkered past?

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-eric-trump-charity

A mong the many campaign scandals that would have sunk a lesser candidate, but somehow had little or no effect on Donald “Grab ’em by the p---y” Trump, were a series of damning allegations about the Donald J. Trump Foundation. An investigation by The Washington Post revealed that Trump hadn’t actually given his namesake charity any of his own money since 2008, and that 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.” In many instances, the Post reported, Trump would then pass the money “on to other charities, which [were] often under the impression that it [was] Trump’s own money.” (Trump previously told the Post “I don’t have to give you records but I’ve given millions away,” though the paper was unable to verify the donations and Trump has not released his tax returns which would, among other things, detail his charitable giving.)

Other alleged business practices at the foundation were, somehow, even shadier. The Post found that Trump “spent more than a quarter-million dollars from [the Donald J. Trump foundation] to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses.” The charity also quite generously donated $25,000 in 2013 to then Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s political fund-raising committee, at a time when Bondi was, totally coincidentally, deciding whether or not to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University (she ultimately decided not to; Trump and his institute of higher learning ultimately settled a class action brought by former students for $25 million). (Aides to both Trump and Bondi told the Post the gift and Trump University case had nothing to do with each other.) Then there was the somewhat bizarre story of Trump bidding on a six-foot-tall painting of himself at a fund-raiser auction and paying the $20,000 tab with the foundation’s money. In November, after the election, the Donald J. Trump Foundation admitted to self-dealing, a.k.a., per Politico, “using charitable funds to benefit the leaders of the organization or their family members.”

The disreputable, potentially illegal behavior apparently doesn’t end with Trump’s own namesake charity, however. According to a report by Forbes, Trump also allegedly used his son Eric’s charity to enrich his business at the expense of, wait for it, kids with cancer.

According to reporter Dan Alexander, for the first four years of its existence, the Eric Trump Foundation, founded in 2007 by Donald‘s second son, Eric Trump, mostly made good on its promises to donors: it sent virtually all its money to sick kids in need at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, with the bulk of the money raised through the charity’s annual golf invitational, held at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York. Because the event takes place at Daddy Trump’s club, Eric Trump told Alexander, “We get to use our assets 100 percent free of charge”—meaning that instead of having to deduct for costs like renting the space and other items, nearly all the funds went to the kids. In reality, the tournament itself cost about $50,000 for the years 2007 through 2010, which Alexander notes is “not quite the zero-cost advantage that a donor might expect given who owned the club, but at least is in line with what other charities pay to host outings at Trump courses.” But starting in 2011, things took a big turn. What changed? We’ll give you two guesses, but you’ll only need one: Donald Trump got involved.