During the 2016 Campaign there was a huge uproar over a supposed “Pay to Play” scandal involving the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. Trump himself proclaimed it ”should be shutdown” because of “it’s corruption.”
It didn’t matter that the Clinton Foundation had signed an ethics agreement not to accept New Foreign donations while Hillary was Secretary of State. It didn’t matter that Hillary herself wasn’t on the Foundation board until 2013, after she was no longer Secretary of State and left the board in 2015 before she ran for President. It didn’t matter that the AP report allegation special treatment of Foundation Donors was thoroughly debunked.
The AP found that 85 of those 154 people, or “more than half,” had donated to the Clinton Foundation or “pledged commitments to its international programs.” The 85 donors collectively contributed as much as $156 million, the AP reported. There were representatives from at least 16 foreign governments, who donated as much as $170 million to the charity, but those representatives were not included in the 154 number, the AP reported.
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Fallon said the data omitted more than 1,700 meetings Clinton had with world leaders as secretary of state. If 1,700 becomes the denominator, then 85 people comprise 5 percent of 1,700 meetings – rather than representing “more than half” of 154. Fallon told The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple Blog that the campaign requested that the AP remove or amend the tweet.
On the whole nearly all the claims including special treatment for a Lebanese Billionaire never actually happened, there we no donations from Saudi Arabia while she was Secretary, the “Russia Uranium Deal” required the approval of 8 other U.S. agencies besides Clinton’s, the company involved was actually Canadian, Russia has no license to export Uranium from the U.S. and the stockholders who was also Foundation Donors were no longer part of the company by the time the deal completed.
And it also didn’t matter that the Clinton Foundation is one of the most efficient and effective charities in the world which has helped save the lives of tens of Millions or people.
So compared to that just how does the Trump Foundation hold up?
This is what, prior to the smears of Trump, the Clinton Foundation and Global Initiative were known for.
The numbers and figures that often go unreported put the life-changing work of the Clinton Foundation in a context that matters. Today, for example, almost 10 million people in more than 70 countries have access to life-saving medicines through the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). In the U.S. 17 million children in more than 29,000 schools now have healthier food and more physical activity options. And through the Clinton Global Initiative, partners have made nearly 3,200 Commitments to Action that have improved the lives of over 430 million people in more than 180 countries.
Because of its commitment to put resources to work, the impact of the Clinton Foundation extends far beyond lifesaving HIV treatments. In Ethiopia alone, where I lived for three years and started the Foundation’s country program, the Clinton Health Access Initiative has worked to prevent mother-to-child transmission to prevent new HIV infections and offer treatment for children. Today in Ethiopia, Clinton Foundation staff continue to work closely with the Ministry of Health on initiatives including a maternal and child health program to reduce mortality at birth, and the CHAI Vaccines program that prevents more than 50,000 deaths among children each year in partnering countries.
Trump on the other hand hasn’t donated any of his own money to his Foundation since 2008, in fact he’s only been taking other people money since that time and largely spending it on himself.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Recently, Hillary Clinton has been criticized for allegedly giving special access to Clinton Foundation donors when she served as secretary of state.
But now Donald Trump is catching heat for how his foundation has functioned.
I’m joined by David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post, who has spent the past few months digging into the Republican nominee’s history of charitable donations and his lack of personal contributions to the Trump Foundation.
David Fahrenthold, thank you for talking with us.
Tell us first a little bit about the foundation. How is it set up? How is it different from other foundations?
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD, The Washington Post: Well, it’s quite a small foundation.
Trump started it in 1987. And in contrast to other people who have about as much money as Trump has, it doesn’t have very much money in at all. The most money it ever had was about $3.3 million in 2009. The most money it has now is about $1 million total. So, there’s no paid staff. The board of it is just four Trumps, Donald, Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, and one Trump Organization employee.
They all work with no pay. They work half-an-hour a week. The most unusual thing about it is not just that it’s small, but whose money is in it. Donald Trump hasn’t put any money into his own foundation until 2008. Instead, he’s got other people to donate. And then he sort of gives their money to away to people who under the impression that they’re getting Donald Trump’s money.
Things that the Trump Foundation has spent it’s money on includes paying off court fines.
Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.
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 height 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.
Trump Foundation money has been used to pay off politicians.
Donald Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty this year, an official at Trump's company said, after it was revealed that Trump's charitable foundation had violated tax laws by giving a political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida's attorney general.
The improper donation, a $25,000 gift from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, was made in 2013. At the time, Attorney General Pam Bondi was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. She decided not to pursue the case.
Bondi has proclaimed that at the time she solicited this donation she wasn’t aware that members of her staff were looking into allegations of fraud involving Trump “University” and that she had no involvement in their ultimate decision not to pursue that case. And then this happened.
A Lawsuit against Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi alleges she abused her authority when she forced 14 businesses her office was investigating to settle by donating money to unregistered charities. Now a Tallahassee judge is demanding Bondi prove her office wasn’t acting inappropriately.
According to the Orlando Weekly, John D. Smith, who owns a company named Storm Stoppers, alleges in his suit that Bondi was investigating the 14 businesses for unfair trade practices, but if they donated to 35 unregistered charities the investigations would be settled.
Bondi’s office allegedly scored $20.5 million from 55 companies in what Smith said is “forced contributions” to charities including her own for Florida Law Enforcement Officer of the Year. Her charity was given four contributions of $40,000 in total by the businesses, the suit claims.
So yeah, clearly Bondi wouldn’t try to shake down somebody for cash donations at all in exchange for looking the other way. Not a chance.And Bondi wasn’t the only State AG that was potentially bought off by Trump cash.
WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott received a $35,000 donation to his successful gubernatorial campaign from Donald Trump. This after a Texas probe into Trump University was dropped in 2010, according to the Associated Press.
The AP reported that Abbott, a Republican, was serving as Texas Attorney General at the time, and opened a civil investigation of "possibly deceptive trade practices" into Trump University, but quietly dropped it when the organization agreed to end its operations in Texas.
Trump subsequently donated $35,000 to Abbott's successful gubernatorial campaign, according to records obtained by the AP.
Trump U suit was ultimately settled with a payout of $25 Million.
A federal judge has approved a $25 million settlement President Donald Trump agreed to late last year in a bid to head off a civil fraud trial over his Trump University real estate seminar program.
U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel issued a 31-page ruling Friday deeming the deal fair and overruling claims from some former Trump University students that they should get larger payments or be allowed to drop out altogether in a bid to force Trump into a trial.
Getting back to the Trump Foundation the various allegations against it are so bad, the New York Attorney General looked at it for “self-dealing.”
The alleged wrongdoing divides into two main categories. The first is the allegation that Trump used the Foundation's money for his own benefit, by channeling charitable contributions to buy things for himself. In 2007, at an auction benefiting a children's charity at Mar-a-Lago, Trump bid $12,000 for a helmet and jersey signed by then-Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. Trump was photographed proudly brandishing the memorabilia, and allegedly kept the stuff as a souvenir.
In 2012, his wife Melania bid $20,000 for a portrait of the Donald, created on the spot by a "speed painter" at a breast cancer fundraiser, also at Mar-a-Lago. Trump kept the six-foot painting––it now reportedly hangs at one of his golf courses––and President Obama couldn't resist skewering Trump with faux-praise for not demanding a 10-foot rendering.
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For a foundation, using the institution's money for the benefit of, say, an officer is called "self-dealing," and the penalty can be loss of tax-free status. But for a public charity, it's called "inurement." The IRS rules require the person receiving the benefit to repay the amount of that benefit to the charity, plus a 25% penalty to the IRS.
Eventually the Trump Foundations was ordered to stop fundraising because they didn’t even do their basic paperwork correctly.
The New York attorney general disclosed Monday that it ordered Donald Trump’s personal charity to cease fundraising immediately after determining that the foundation was violating state law by soliciting donations without proper authorization.
The message was conveyed in a “notice of violation” sent Friday to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, of which Trump is president.
The night before, The Washington Post reported that Trump’s foundation — which has subsisted entirely on other people’s donations since 2008 — had failed to register with the state as a charity soliciting money.
As of now the Foundation remains halted while NYAG Schneiderman continues to investigate, and when Trump himself called for it to be shutdown, Schneiderman blocked it until his investigtion is complete.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump cannot move ahead with his plan to dismantle his charitable foundation because state prosecutors are probing whether the president-elect personally benefited from its spending, the New York attorney general’s office said Tuesday.
“The Trump foundation is still under investigation by this office and cannot legally dissolve until that investigation is complete,” said Amy Spitalnick, spokeswoman for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
The statement came after Trump announced that he wanted to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation, part of what his presidential transition team says is an effort to erase any potential conflicts of interest before he takes office Jan. 20.
And this isn’t the only Trump charity with problems, as we’ve seen with the Eric Trump Foundation which managed to funnel nearly a $Million back into Trump properties.
A careful review of Eric Trump’s charity revealed the eponymous foundation spent large sums of money at fundraising events on Donald Trump’s golf courses—$881,779 in total. In 2013, $100,000 went directly to Donald Trump himself. He received a further $88,000 in 2014.During the 2016 Campaign there was a huge uproar over a supposed “Pay to Play” scandal involving the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. Trump himself proclaimed it ”should be shutdown” because of “it’s corruption.”
“There’s nothing necessarily wrong with contracting with businesses you own,” says Law Professor Philip Hackney. An ethical problem emerges, however, when such a “charitable” organization touts a 95 to 100 percent donation ratio, as The Eric Trump Foundation does. “There’s a question—maybe not of the legality, but of the ethics of it,” Hackney tells The Daily Beast.
So that may be technically legal, it’s still particularly skeevy.
A lot of this is old news of course, but then now there’s this new charity effort by Ivanka Trump which sounds remarkably similar to the Clinton Foundation in structure.
Mike Allen reports: “Ivanka Trump told me yesterday from Berlin that she has begun building a massive fund that will benefit female entrepreneurs around the globe. Both countries and companies will contribute to create a pool of capital to economically empower women. … Canadians, Germans and a few Middle Eastern countries have already made quiet commitments, as have several corporations, a source said.”
If true, this is egregious and potentially illegal, according to multiple ethics and legal experts. “If the donation would be a quid pro quo bribe, then asking for it is certainly solicitation of a bribe, which is every bit as criminal as the bribe itself,” Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe tells me via email. “But I started that sentence with ‘if’ because I don’t have enough facts about the donation request to opine on the ultimate bribe issue.” Nevertheless, he says:
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Tribe explains, “Even if the First Daughter and Assistant to the President somehow manages to create formal distance between herself and that version of the Clinton Foundation, which of course her father denounced endlessly during the campaign, the hypocrisy of the move is jaw-dropping.” He adds, “Such contributions would surely constitute a financial benefit to … her brand, and her family’s brand even if she is unable to spend a penny of the contributions themselves. As such, soliciting such contributions violates at least the spirit of the Foreign Emoluments Clause.”
Remember when I mentioned that the Clinton Foundation signed an agreement not to take Foreign Donations while Hillary was Secretary of State? And that was at at time when she wasn’t a member of the Foundation, this was about limited how her husband could fundraise.
And now we have Ivanka Trump, who has taken a “unpaid” position in the White House, openly saying she’s going to start soliciting foreign donations to her new charity foundation? How exactly is that not an Emolument? In what ways do we have any assurance that this isn’t exactly the kind of “Pay For Play” scheme that Trump accused Clinton of, and that much of these funds won’t wind up direct in the pockets of the Trump family as we’ve previously seen with the now shutdown Trump Foundation and the Eric Trump Foundation?
It seems that whenever people give the Trump’s charity money, they better keep a string and a GPS tracker on it to find out just who’s pocket it winds up in.
And there’s one other difference between the Clinton Foundation and Ivanka’s new charity — the Clinton Foundation managed to save people lives, whereas Ivanka apparently wants to save their businesses. Aren’t people who usually give money for the latter known as “investors?”
(This is technically the third article in a series I’m doing comparing and contrasting the Trump and Clinton “scandals.” The first, addressed their relative efforts in “Obstruction and Influence” over investigations targeting them. The second, addressed Trump’s many failures on National Security.)