With weeks of diligent, old-fashioned reporting, David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post has been digging through the books of the Donald J. Trump Foundation. He’s discovered that Trump used his fund to buy himself a signed football helmet, that the foundation paid for at least two (2) giant-sized portraits of Donald Trump, and that Trump took more than $250,000 out of the foundation to use for paying personal debts (including an attempt to welch on a golf bet) and political payoffs.
But one of the first things that turned up: The money in Donald Trump’s foundation wasn’t coming from Donald Trump. Trump made no deposits to his foundation after 2008. So why were other people putting money in Trump's cookie jar?
Donald Trump’s charitable foundation has received approximately $2.3 million from companies that owed money to Trump or one of his businesses but were instructed to pay Trump’s tax-exempt foundation instead, according to people familiar with the transactions.
But why would Trump direct funds that were supposed to go to his company into his foundation instead? Does it mean that Trump really was making donations after all? There’s another possibility.
Did Trump, in fact, pay income tax in the cases where he directed his own fees to the Trump Foundation?
That’s … a really interesting question.
Donald Trump has already had to pay a fine for the $25,000 pay-for-play check he cut for Florida AG Pam Bondi. But Trump hasn’t yet paid a penalty for the $100,000 he spent attacking New York AG Eric Schneiderman, or the violations of self-dealing rules in using foundation funds to pay his own bills.
Donald Trump has violated the law multiple times by misusing his foundation. Did he also use the foundation to take in payments without paying taxes? We can’t know until we see his taxes.
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