Donald Trump Used Charity Donations To Settle Lawsuits

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used more than a quarter million dollars from his charitable foundation to pay for lawsuits linked to activities by his for-profit companies, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

“Fahrenthold references a case in 2007 when Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida had “$120,000 in unpaid fines”.

To settle the case, the city government agreed to forgive the fine if the club donated $100,000 to a particular charity for former veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded nearly entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.

As for the remaining $158,000, Trump reportedly used foundation money to settle a dispute between a Trump golf course in NY and an unnamed plaintiff.

“In the worst-case scenario for Trump and the Foundation, the IRS could take away the Foundation’s non-profit status – effectively ending it – and charge tax penalties for the political and private benefit of its actions for Trump”.

The newspaper reported that Mr Trump spent $5,000 of the charity’s money in 2013 to buy adverts for his chain of hotels.

“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen”, attorney Jeffrey Tenenbaum told the Post.

The revelation that Trump possibly violated tax laws by using his charity to settle legal troubles is the latest in a series of damning stories to arise from Trump’s charity.

“Clearly the Trump Foundation is as much a charitable organization as Trump University is an institute of higher education”, she said.

Trump made another fun purchase when he bought a football helmet signed by Tim Tebow in 2012 for ,000, again using the foundation’s money.

In two separate instances, Trump spent a total of $30,000 in Trump Foundation money on portraits of himself sold at charity fundraisers.

The next year, $10,000 of taxpayers’ money was used to buy a portrait of himself at a fundraiser event.

If highlighting Donald Trump’s xenophobia, racism, sexism, fascism, ignorance, temper, hypocrisy, or overall derangement hasn’t dented his popularity, it’s not about to start. So far, Trump has refused to release his own tax returns.

According to the Post, Trump was the only donor to his foundation until the mid-2000s.

The New York Attorney General is currentlAt the time, Bondi was considering joining a fraud lawsuit against Trump University, but decided against it after Trump donated to her campaign.

“Yes, Trump pledged as part of the settlement to make a payment to a charity, and yes, the foundation is writing a check to a charity”.