‘Brazen’: Trump Used $258,000 in Donations to His Foundation as Slush Fund to Settle Legal Disputes

Appears to Violate IRS Rules Against Self-Dealing

Donald Trump used over $250,000 of other people’s money, donated to the Trump Foundation, as a slush fund to settle legal disputes and even to buy portraits of himself. 

The Washington Post reports in one case Trump used $100,000 of his Foundation’s funds to settle a legal dispute with Palm Beach County over the size of a flag pole at his club, Mar-a-Lago. The funds should have come from the club, but they came in the form of a check from the Trump Foundation.

The Trump Foundation was founded in 1987 with Trump’s money, but after draining it all but dry, Trump between 2006 and 2009 stopped donating to it entirely and has since relied on other people’s money to fund it.

“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,” the Post reports.

Other expenditures include $10,000 to buy a second portrait of Trump – he has also spent $20,000 of the Foundation’s money for a first, six-foot-tall portrait of himself.

“If the Internal Revenue Service were to find that Trump violated self-dealing rules, the agency could require him to pay penalty taxes or to reimburse the foundation for all the money it spent on his behalf,” the Post says.

Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a charity advisor at the Venable law firm in Washington, tells the Post, “I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen.”

Calling the details in the Post story “really shocking,” Tenenbaum says: “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.” 

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license