Just as a newly resurgent Donald Trump had managed to reduce Hillary Clinton’s lead in national polls to within two percentage points, the G.O.P. nominee is facing fresh accusations that he used his namesake charity to engage in potentially illegal behavior. Another bombshell report from The Washington Post’s intrepid Trump investigator, David Fahrenthold, reveals how the billionaire businessman used more than a quarter-of-a-million dollars from his tax-exempt, private foundation to settle lawsuits against him—largely using other donors’ money.
According to the Post’s latest exposé, Donald Trump on four occasions allegedly used money from The Donald J. Trump Foundation to resolve $258,000 worth of legal headaches stemming from his for-profit businesses. One of the most egregious involves a legal settlement Trump reached in 2007 with the town of Palm Beach, Florida, over $120,000 in unpaid fines incurred by his Mar-a-Lago Club. Palm Beach reportedly said that it would waive the fines, which were related to a dispute over the size of the resort’s massive flag pole, if Trump donated $100,000 to a charity for veterans. But rather than reaching into his own pocket for the money, the Trump Foundation wrote a $100,000 check to the Fisher House, the Post reports, citing tax filings.
Trump, who has not donated any of his own money to the Trump Foundation since 2008, used the non-profit to deal with another lawsuit in 2010, when he was sued for allegedly reneging on a deal to pay out a million-dollar prize to a man who got a hole-in-one at one of Trump’s New York golf courses. Trump reached a settlement with the plaintiff, Martin Greenberg, wherein the golf course agreed to donate $158,000 to a charity of Greenberg’s choosing. Instead, tax filings reveal, the Trump Foundation footed the bill. (Greenberg declined the Post’s request for comment.) Another instance of alleged “self-dealing” occurred in 2013, when the Trump Foundation made a $5,000 contribution to the D.C. Preservation League; the money was spent on a “sponsorship” that amounted to little more than an advertising campaign for Trump’s hotels. Then in 2014, the Trump Foundation spent $10,000 on a portrait of Trump during a charity gala for the Unicorn Children’s Foundation that was hosted at Mar-a-Lago, the Post reports. (Both the Trump Foundation and Trump declined the Post’s request for comment.)
The new allegations of wrongdoing are only the latest for the Trump Foundation. The G.O.P. nominee’s namesake charity was first thrust into the spotlight earlier this summer when it was revealed that the foundation made a $25,000 political contribution to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s re-election campaign—a violation of tax laws for which Trump paid a $2,500 fine—just as the politician was deciding whether or not to open a fraud investigation into Trump University. (Bondi ultimately chose not to move forward with the investigation, and both her and Trump have denied any wrongdoing.) Other revelations have included Trump using foundation funds to purchase a $20,000 six-foot-tall portrait of himself and a $12,000 football helmet signed by then-quarterback for the Denver Broncos Tim Tebow. Law requires that neither item remain in Trump’s possession after the foundation bought them, purportedly for charitable purchases, but it is unclear where either object is today.
