LA Times
The New York attorney general filed a lawsuit against President Trump on Thursday, charging that he misused his charitable foundation for personal and political gains over more than a decade.
In the scathing complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court, the attorney general used adjectives such as āillegal,āā āpersistentā and āwillfulā to characterize the violations of the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
The president āused charitable assets to pay off the legal obligations of entities he controlled to promote Trump hotels, to purchase personal items and to support his presidential election campaign,āā the lawsuit charged.
The attorney general, Barbara D. Underwood, is seeking $2.8 million in restitution from the Trump Foundation and to bar Trump for 10 years from serving as a director, trustee or officer of a nonprofit. The suit says that $1 million in remaining funds should be distributed to other charities.
Headquartered out of Trump Tower, the foundation was set up in 1987 as a nonprofit to raise money for charity. Trump himself has donated very little to the foundation since 2008, although he reimbursed some of the foundationās donations after the attorney general began investigating.
The 41-page lawsuit hinted at the possibility of criminal charges in the future.
āMr. Trumpās wrongful use of the Foundation to benefit his campaign was willful and knowing. Mr. Trump was aware of the prohibition on political activities and the requirement of restrictions on related party transactions. Among other things, he repeatedly signed, under penalties of perjury, IRS Forms 990 in which he attested that the Foundation did not engage in transactions with interested parties, and that the Foundation did not carry out political activity,āā the lawsuit stated.
The foundation violated those pledges, the suit alleges.
And although the money was indeed donated to charities, the donations were often made in order to settle lawsuits, advance Trumpās businesses or to generate publicity for Trumpās presidential campaign.
Among the many examples cited in the lawsuit:
- Trump used $158,000 to settle a lawsuit against his Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida by an angry golfer who claimed he was owed money for hitting a hole-in-one during a tournament. (Under the terms of the settlement, the money went to a foundation that had been set up by the golfer, Martin Greenberg.)
- The same device was used in 2007 to settle a dispute between Mar-a-Lago and the town of Palm Beach over building permits and flagpole heights. In the settlement, the Trump Foundation agreed to donate $100,000 to a charity of Palm Beachās choosing, which was an organization to help veterans.
- An additional $10,000 went to buy a 4-foot-tall painting of Trump from a childrenās charity; it had been hung in the interior of a golf club in Miami, but has since been returned to the foundation.
- The foundation donated $25,000 in 2013 to an organization seeking the reelection of Floridaās Republican attorney general, Pam Bondi. At the time, Bondi was considering joining a lawsuit against Trump for allegedly defrauding students at his now-defunct Trump University. After the donation was made, she decided not to participate in the suit.
It was during the presidential campaign in 2016 that the Trump Foundation became an invaluable political tool, used to boost Trumpās image at campaign rallies, where he was portrayed as a benevolent philanthropist.
Over and over at rallies in Iowa in the run-up to the caucuses there, Trump carried onto the stage enlarged mock-ups of checks that his foundation had purportedly written to local charities. The checks even had Trumpās campaign slogan (āMake America Great Againā) written along the bottom. Corey Lewandowski, Trumpās campaign manager, directed which charities would receive the money.
āWhen I raise money for the veterans, and itās a massive amount of money, find out how much money Hillary Clintonās given to the veterans,āā Trump boasted after a 2016 Iowa fundraiser that had been organized by his campaign.
The lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation also named three of his adult children, Donald, Ivanka and Eric, as defendants, although their alleged offenses were of omission, not commission. All three served as board members, although the lawsuit contends that the foundation hadnāt held a board meeting since 1999.
āIn the absence of a functioning board, Mr. Trump ran the Foundation according to his whim, rather than the law,ā the lawsuit states.
Trump has complained that Schneiderman, who was on a āleadership councilā of prominent New York Democrats during the Clinton campaign, was carrying out a political vendetta.
The president responded to the lawsuit Thursday with a series of tweets.
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