Donald Trump Used A Quarter Million Dollars From His Charity To Settle Personal Lawsuits
This is so brazen that it takes your breath away.
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 size 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.
In another case, court papers say one of Trump’s golf courses in New York agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff’s chosen charity. A $158,000 donation was made by the Trump Foundation, according to tax records.
According to the report, Trump used Trump Foundation money, that would be money that was donated by other people to his charitable foundation to do charitable stuff, to pay for debts owed by Trump’s personal businesses.
This, however, is in keeping with Trump using Trump Foundation money for a political donation to Florida’s Attorney General and to buy a portrait of him for his personal use. These all are covered by the IRS regulations prohibiting “self dealing” by charitable organizations.
