Monday, October 10, 2016

Has the Clinton Foundation been examined as much as the Trump Foundation?

No.

The Clinton Foundation has been examined more closely and has been given greater scrutiny that the Trump Foundation. It is only very recently that the Trump Foundation has been examined - and the examination has not been good for the Trump Foundation or Donald Trump himself.

Just today (September 30, 2016) it has come out:

Trump Foundation lacks the certification required for charities that solicit money

Donald Trump’s charitable foundation — which has been sustained for years by donors outside the Trump family — has never obtained the certification that New York requires before charities can solicit money from the public, according to the state attorney general’s office.

Under the laws in New York, where the Donald J. Trump Foundation is based, any charity that solicits more than $25,000 a year from the public must obtain a special kind of registration beforehand. Charities as large as Trump’s must also submit to a rigorous annual audit that asks — among other things — whether the charity spent any money for the personal benefit of its officers.

If New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) finds that Trump’s foundation raised money in violation of the law, he could order the charity to stop raising money immediately. With a court’s permission, Schneiderman could also force Trump to return money that his foundation has already raised.

In recent years, Trump’s foundation does appear to have violated tax laws in several instances.

In 2013, it gave a donation to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) — despite a ban on nonprofit groups making political gifts. (Shortly after receiving the donation, Bondi, in a remarkable coincidence, dropped the state’s fraud case against Trump University.) The Trump Foundation then filed an incorrect tax filing, which omitted any mention of that gift, and said incorrectly that the money had gone to a charity in Kansas. Trump paid a $2,500 penalty tax for that political gift this year.

In two other instances, Trump’s foundation has made payments which appeared to help settle legal disputes involving Trump’s for-profit businesses. In 2007, Trump’s foundation paid $100,000 to settle a lawsuit involving his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. And in 2012, the foundation paid $158,000 to the charity of a New York man named Martin Greenberg on the day that Greenberg settled a lawsuit against one of Trump’s golf courses.



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