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发帖数: 12685 | | f**o
发帖数: 12685 | | s******r
发帖数: 5309 | 3 New York files suit against President Trump, alleging his charity engaged in
‘illegal conduct’
2:26
How Donald Trump directed millions to his foundation
Donald Trump directed millions of dollars to his tax-exempt foundation. Here
's how. (Video: Peter Stevenson, Lee Powell/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The
Washington Post)
By David A. Fahrenthold
June 14 at 11:19 AM
Email the author
The New York attorney general on Thursday filed suit against President Trump
and his three eldest children alleging “persistently illegal conduct” at
the president’s personal charity, saying Trump repeatedly misused the
nonprofit — to pay off his businesses’ creditors, to decorate one of his
golf clubs and to stage a multimillion dollar giveaway at his 2016 campaign
events.
In the suit, filed Thursday morning, attorney general Barbara Underwood
asked a state judge to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation. She asked
that its remaining $1 million in assets be distributed to other charities
and that Trump be forced to pay at least $2.8 million in restitution and
penalties.
Underwood also asks that Trump be banned from leading any other New York
nonprofit for 10 years — seeking to apply a penalty usually reserved for
the operators of small-time charity frauds to the president of the United
States.
In the suit, Underwood noted that Trump had already paid more than $330,000
in reimbursements and penalty taxes since 2016. New York state began probing
the Trump Foundation in response to an investigation by The Washington Post.
[Trump boasts about his philanthropy. But his giving falls short of his
words.]
But she asked the judge to go further, and require Trump to pay millions
more. She said a 20-month state investigation found that Trump had
repeatedly violated laws that set the ground rules for tax-exempt
foundations — most importantly, that their money is meant to serve the
public good, and not to provide private benefits to their founders.
Pedestrians walk past Trump Tower in New York on Aug. 3, 2017. (John Taggart
/For The Washington Post)
“This resulted in multiple violations of state and federal law,” Underwood
wrote in the legal complaint.
Underwood was promoted to the position of attorney general only weeks ago,
succeeding Eric Schneiderman (D) after he resigned following allegations
that he had physically abused several romantic partners.
In a series of tweets Thursday morning, Trump suggested the lawsuit was
politically motivated.
“The sleazy New York Democrats, and their now disgraced (and run out of
town) A.G. Eric Schneiderman, are doing everything they can to sue me on a
foundation that took in $18,800,000 and gave out to charity more money than
it took in, $19,200,000. I won’t settle this case!” he wrote, adding: “
Schneiderman, who ran the Clinton campaign in New York, never had the guts
to bring this ridiculous case, which lingered in their office for almost 2
years. Now he resigned his office in disgrace, and his disciples brought it
when we would not settle.”
Underwood is a career staffer, not an elected official. She has promised not
to seek election for a full term as attorney general in the fall. She
declined to comment on the case beyond issuing a written statement.
President Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is seen in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 23,
2017. (Eric Thayer/Reuters)
“As our investigation reveals, the Trump Foundation was little more than a
checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits,
regardless of their purpose or legality,” Underwood said in the statement.
Underwood said she had sent letters to both the IRS and the Federal Election
Commission, identifying what she called “possible violations” of tax law
and federal campaign law by Trump’s foundation.
Underwood has jurisdiction over the Trump Foundation because the charity is
based at Trump Tower in Manhattan and registered in New York State.
Trump has been president of the foundation since he founded it in 1987. In
late 2016, he had promised to shut down the Trump Foundation — but could
not while the attorney general’s investigation continued.
Trump’s children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump were also
named in the lawsuit because they have been official board members of the
Donald J. Trump Foundation for years. Under the law, Underwood said, board
members are supposed to scrutinize a charity’s spending for signs that its
leader — in this case, their father — was misusing the funds.
But in reality, Underwood wrote, the three Trump children exercised no such
oversight. The board had not actually met since 1999.
“The Foundation’s directors failed to meet basic fiduciary duties and
abdicated all responsibility for ensuring that the Foundation’s assets were
used in compliance with the law,” Underwood wrote.
She asked the judge to ban each of the three from serving as a director of a
New York nonprofit for a year. It was not clear if any of the three are
serving currently on the board of any such charities: Eric Trump, for
instance, stepped down from the board of the Eric Trump Foundation after the
2016 election, and the charity was renamed Curetivity.
Although Trump’s name is on the foundation, in recent years most of its
money was not actually his. Trump did not give any donation to the Trump
foundation between 2008 and 2015 — instead, its largest benefactors in
recent years have been wrestling moguls Vince and Linda McMahon, who gave $5
million total in 2007 and 2009. Linda McMahon was later appointed by Trump
as head of the Small Business Administration. The McMahons have declined to
answer questions about the reasons for their gifts.
The lawsuit shows that the Trump Foundation — which Trump founded to give
away some of the royalties from his 1987 book “The Art of the Deal” —
looked, on paper, like other tax-exempt nonprofits. It filed annual reports
with New York state and the IRS. It listed directors and donations.
But behind the scenes, Underwood said, the foundation was essentially one of
Trump’s personal checkbooks — a pool of funds that his accounting clerks
knew to use whenever Trump wanted to pay money to a nonprofit. By law, Trump
wasn’t allowed to buy things for himself using the charity’s money, even
if he was buying them from nonprofits.
At one point, during a deposition, a New York state investigator asked Allen
Weisselberg — a Trump Organization employee who was also listed as
treasurer for the Trump Foundation — if the foundation had a policy for
determining which specific payments the foundation was allowed to make.
“There’s no policy, just so you understand,” Weisselberg said. The
interviewer asked if Weisselberg had understood he was actually on the board
of the Trump Foundation, and had been for more than a decade.
“I did not,” Weisselberg said.
With no outside oversight over Trump’s use of foundation funds, Underwood
said, the future president had repeatedly used his charity’s money to help
his businesses, and himself.
Twice, for instance, Trump used the charity’s money to settle legal
disputes that involved his for-profit businesses.
[Trump used $258,000 from his charity to settle legal problems]
In 2007, he settled a dispute with the town of Palm Beach over code
violations at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. The town agreed to waive outstanding
fines if Mar-a-Lago gave $100,000 to a charity.
But the donation, to an organization called Fisher House, came instead from
the foundation, Underwood said — after Trump wrote a note to Weisselberg.
“Allen W, DJT Foundation, $100,000 to Fisher House (Settlement of flag
issue in Palm Beach),” said the note, which is included in the lawsuit.
In addition, in 2012, a Trump golf club agreed to pay $158,000 to settle a
lawsuit with a man who was denied a $1 million hole-in-one prize during a
tournament at the club. The Trump Foundation paid the money instead of the
club, Underwood said.
Both of those payments were first reported by The Washington Post. In March,
after the attorney general’s investigation was underway, Trump repaid his
foundation all $258,000, plus more than $12,000 in interest, Underwood said.
Underwood also listed several smaller instances of what she called “self-
dealing,” meaning Trump using foundation money to help his businesses. The
charity paid $5,000 to put an ad for Trump hotels in the program for a
charity gala. It paid $32,000 to satisfy an obligation of a Trump company
that manages a New York estate. It paid $10,000 to buy a portrait of Trump,
which was later found hanging in the sports bar at Trump’s Doral golf
resort.
Underwood said Trump had already repaid amounts spent by the foundation,
plus penalty taxes totaling more than $4,000.
In the case of the portrait, she said Trump’s golf club had now paid the
foundation the “fair rental value” of using the foundation-owned painting
as decoration. The value: $182.
IRS rules also prohibit tax-exempt foundations from aiding political
campaigns. But Underwood listed two instances where Trump’s foundation had
seemed to do so.
In August 2013, Trump donated $25,000 from his foundation to a Florida
political group aiding the reelection of state Attorney General Pam Bondi (R
). Around the same time, Bondi’s office was considering whether to join an
ongoing lawsuit by Schneiderman, then the New York attorney general,
alleging Trump had defrauded students at his now-defunct “Trump University.”
Afterward, the Trump Foundation omitted any mention of Bondi’s political
group — called And Justice for All — from its annual report to the IRS,
and instead said the $25,000 donation had gone to a nonprofit in Kansas with
a similar-sounding name.
Underwood said Trump’s staff blamed confusion among accounting clerks for
spending the foundation’s money, instead of Trump’s own. As for the
incorrect IRS filing, Underwood wrote, “the Foundation has no credible
explanation for the false reporting of grant recipients.”
After The Post reported on this donation to Bondi’s group in 2016, Trump
repaid the $25,000 and paid a penalty tax of $2,500 for an improper
political gift.
But Underwood alleged that the campaign Trump’s foundation helped most was
his own.
In January 2016, Trump skipped a debate among Republican candidates because
he was feuding with Fox News, the debate’s host. Instead, Trump held a
televised fundraiser for veterans — drawing millions from wealthy friends
and small-dollar donors, and giving much of it to the Trump Foundation.
Underwood said that, afterward, “the Foundation ceded control over the
charitable funds it raised to senior Trump Campaign staff.” She cited
emails in which Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s then-campaign manager, directed
which veterans’ charities should receive money.
At one point, Lewandowski emailed Weisselberg to ask if the Trump Foundation
’s money could be ready to distribute during Trump’s last campaign events
before the Iowa caucuses: “Is there any way we can make some disbursements
[from the proceeds of the fundraiser] this week while in Iowa? Specifically
on Saturday,” Lewandowski wrote, in an email cited by Underwood.
At one point, the lawsuit says, Trump actually gave out an oversized $100,
000 “Trump Foundation” check to a charity at a campaign event in Council
Bluffs, Iowa.
The problem: nobody appears to have told the Trump Foundation.
“This ‘check’ was given out (see video). This is not one of the charities
we’ve cut a check to yet. Are there other charities like this?” wrote
Jeff McConney, a Trump Organization staffer, in an email to Lewandowski
cited in the lawsuit.
The check was later cut.
In 2016, Trump sought to excuse his foundation’s actions in a letter to the
New York attorney general, saying that the Iowa fundraiser was a charity
event. “This statement was false,” Underwood wrote, “because, in reality,
the Fundraiser was a Trump Campaign event in which the Foundation
participated.”
She wrote that Trump had repeatedly signed charity documents saying that
nonprofits like his were not allowed to become involved in political
campaigns. “Mr. Trump’s wrongful use of the Foundation to benefit his
Campaign was willful and knowing,” she wrote.
As president, Trump has repeatedly called for the repeal of the “Johnson
Amendment,” a 1954 tax code provision that imposed the ban on political
activity by nonprofit groups. | d****o
发帖数: 32610 | 4 趁世界杯开赛浑水摸鱼
【在 f**o 的大作中提到】
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| f**o
发帖数: 12685 | 5 今天是川普七十二岁生日
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【在 d****o 的大作中提到】
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| a******d
发帖数: 955 | | f**o
发帖数: 12685 | 7 性侵跟川普找鸡哪个严重?
: 这个傻逼检察长比施奈德曼还要傻逼吗
【在 a******d 的大作中提到】
: 这个傻逼检察长比施奈德曼还要傻逼吗
| a******d
发帖数: 955 | 8 当然性侵严重啊这还有疑问？
【在 f**o 的大作中提到】
: 性侵跟川普找鸡哪个严重?
:
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: 这个傻逼检察长比施奈德曼还要傻逼吗
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发帖数: 178 | 9 果然有脑残舔肛出来吃拉稀屎！呵呵。
【在 a******d 的大作中提到】
: 这个傻逼检察长比施奈德曼还要傻逼吗
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