The Donald J. Trump Foundation
- Charlie Biscotto
- Dec 29, 2016
- 3 min read
Over the weekend, Donald Trump promised to shut down his eponymous foundation "to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President." We at whyistrumpwrongtoday.com have stressed before the importance of avoiding even the appearance of impropriety as central to the office of the presidency before, so we salute this decision. Except that there are a few small problems.
The first is that the Foundation can't actually close. It's under investigation by the Attorney General of the State of New York for self-dealing and failing to register as a charity that solicits donations. Tax filings for 2015 even appear to have admitted to wrongdoing by the charity, and they have since ceased fundraising.
Either Donald Trump knew that he could not close his foundation and lied, or he made a statement he could not verify. In any event, he is unable to close his charity, and that inability is a direct result of either willfully or ignorantly illegal activity. To make matters worse, he keeps bringing it up, and he keeps actively lying about the foundation and what it's done.
It's true that he's given millions to his charity and raised millions more. But to say that all of its money is given to charity would have to mean you believe Trump himself is a charity. As David A. Fahrenthold reported (among many of the above tidbits he has broken):
New findings, for instance, show that the Trump Foundation’s largest-ever gift — $264,631 — was used to renovate a fountain outside the windows of Trump’s Plaza Hotel.
Its smallest-ever gift, for $7, was paid to the Boy Scouts in 1989, at a time when it cost $7 to register a new Scout. Trump’s oldest son was 11 at the time. Trump did not respond to a question about whether the money was paid to register him.
He also used foundation money to buy a membership to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and "did not respond to a question about whether the membership was for his own use."
The problem here is not that the media isn't reporting what good Trump has done with his charity. I'm certain there has been some. But he has also used foundation money to enrich himself and his family. He's been so bold as to donate foundation money to a political campaign for an Attorney General who was considering fraud allegations against Trump University, a violation for which he's since paid a $2,500 fine, all the while criticizing the Clinton Foundation with attacks he might have offered against his own.
Perhaps the largest family of donors to the Trump Foundation outside of the Trumps is World Wrestling Entertainment's McMahon family, whose matriarch Linda will take over as head of the Small Business Administration, prompting renewed allegations of corruption.
Ultimately, what has happened before with the Donald J. Trump Foundation is between him and the State of New York. The corruption cannot be questioned- it's been admitted to on tax forms and in fines. It would serve Trump best not to remind us of his hypocrisy towards the Clinton Foundation over the last year. He was no Boy Scout (unless that donation was for him rather than his son), but enough Americans accepted that to allow him election to the presidency. Pretending to the moral high ground is a transparent lie, and it must be called out as one so long as he continues to repeat it.