There’s really only one big question left unanswered by the work David Fahrenthold has been doing on the true nature of the Donald J. Trump Foundation: why is Fahrenthold the only one doing this work?
For months we’ve known that Trump used money from his charity to buy himself an autographed football jersey.
Trump won, eventually, with a bid of $12,000. Afterward, he posed with the helmet. His purchase made gossip-column news: a flourish of generosity, by a mogul with money to burn. "The Donald giveth, and The Donald payeth," wrote the Palm Beach Daily News. "Blessed be the name of The Donald."
But Trump didn't actually pay with his own money.
And we’ve learned that Donald Trump commissioned a 6-foot painting of—who else?—Donald Trump, using $20,000 of money intended for charity. And all those awards that litter his office come from money other people gave.
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.
And Donald Trump has paid an IRS penalty for writing a $25,000 check to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
In that year's tax filings, The Post reported, the Trump Foundation did not notify the IRS of this political donation. Instead, Trump's foundation listed a donation — also for $25,000 — to a Kansas charity with a name similar to that of Bondi's political group. In fact, Trump's foundation had not given the Kansas group any money.
And that’s just the tip of a massive iceberg that Fahrenthold has uncovered simply by sitting down with the documents of the Trump Foundation and working the phone to check the relationship between what Trump says his foundation is about, and the reality that Donald Trump has created a money laundering scheme with which he buys political influence (and keen toys) using other people’s money.
The biggest scandal? That everything Fahrenthold has done didn’t require some exclusive access to a single “Deep Throat” source. It took only public information, a telephone, and dedicated work. And yet, other outlets seem singularly reluctant to look into what is clearly a definitive case of corruption.
What started out in 1987 as a foundation supposedly designed so that Trump could direct his personal wealth to charities was abruptly remodeled in 2001 and increasingly became a way that people could give their money to Trump without simply handing him a cash-stuffed briefcase. Over the next six years, the Trump Foundation acquired less and less of its funding from Trump, and more and more from those who wanted to be Trump’s pals.
In truth, Donald J. Trump never contributed that much to the Donald J.Trump Foundation. In his best year, 1989, he gave his foundation $1 million — a tithe of 0.01% for someone who claims to be worth $10 billion. He never came close to this amount again. During several years, he gave next to nothing.
Since 2008, Trump has given his foundation exactly that—nothing. He’s been happy to accept the awards, attend the banquets, and take the credit, but he’s not given one thin dime of his own money to the cause.
That Palm Beach award Trump is so proud of? Here’s how it really happened.
Trump had earlier gone to a charity in New Jersey — the Charles Evans Foundation, named for a deceased businessman — and asked for a donation. Trump said he was raising money for the Palm Beach Police Foundation.
The Evans Foundation said yes. In 2009 and 2010, it gave a total of $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a small charity that the Republican presidential nominee founded in 1987.
Then, Trump’s foundation turned around and made donations to the police group in South Florida. In those years, the Trump Foundation’s gifts totaled $150,000.
Trump had effectively turned the Evans Foundation’s gifts into his own gifts, without adding any money of his own.
Did Trump tell the Charles Evans Foundation that he was going to contribute nothing himself, or that he wasn’t going to even bother to solicit from other sites? Instead, he just took their money, pretended it was his money, and took the plaudits.
But using the Trump Foundation as a means of racking up publicity, football shirts, and oversized self portraits isn’t the worst thing about Trump’s foundation. He has also been using the foundation to launder political contributions against his opponents.
Donald Trump’s charitable foundation gave $100,000 in 2014 to a conservative activist group that was used to help finance a federal lawsuit against New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — the same public official who was suing the real estate mogul for fraud over the operations of Trump University.
As well as political contributions for those who did him favors.
Florida’s attorney general personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
Donald Trump
- Misused charitable funds to buy items for himself, treating his foundation as a candy jar he could spend on anything he liked.
- Used his foundation to garner praise and publicity for donations that he didn’t actually make.
- Illegally used his foundation to give make political contributions unassociated with any charity.
And that is still not the worst of it.
We know that in at least one case—the contribution to Bondi—Donald Trump claimed to be making a donation to a different group, one that had a charitable standing. But he didn’t. He routed that money to Bondi’s SuperPAC instead.
By simply calling charities and asking them if they received the money claimed in the documents of the Trump Foundation, Fahrenthold has found that the Kansas group that didn’t receive the claimed cash is far from the only such group.
Overall, there are millions of dollars in question and over $50,000 known to be missing. Did it go to Trump, to pay for more decorations in his elaborate lifestyle? Or did that money go to warp our political system in other ways?
For all the attention this story is getting, those millions might as well have gone to reporters.
Why is this not the story of the year?
