Trump Used Charity Funds To Settle Legal Issues

More than $250,000 from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s charity foundation – the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which was almost entirely funded by people besides the billionaire real estate mogul – was used to settle legal issues for Trump’s for-profit businesses. A Washington Post investigation revealed four expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing,” which prevent nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses. In 2007, the Donald J. Trump Foundation paid $100,000 to a charity in order to settle a dispute with the town of Palm Beach, Fla., which had fined Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club $120,000 over the height of a flag pole. In the other large donation case, a Trump golf course in New York agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff’s charity of choice. The $158,000 donation came from the Trump Foundation. “I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a Venable law firm charity advisor. “If he’s using other people’s money – run through his foundation – to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I’ve seen in a while.”