The #1 Reason to Vote for Trump Gets Dissolved After Years of Grift
On This Day In 2018
Here’s how Trump introduced himself to voters at his campaign kickoff in 2015 and made the case why he should become president: “I think that number one, I am a nice person. I give a lot of money away to charities and other things.”
True, Trump did indeed control his Trump Foundation charity. However, OTDI 2018, the New York AG’s office filed a lawsuit detailing “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation.” The Foundation was supposed to be independent, yet it seemed to exist chiefly to buy things for the benefit of the Trump Family or their family business.
The alleged illegal actions included using Foundation funds to pay for vanity portraits of Donald, contributions to favorite politicians in Florida, a Tim Tebow helmet, and even the $264,231 restoration of a statue just outside Trump’s hotel. And Trump’s children sat on the Foundation board.
Trump agreed to dissolve his foundation shortly thereafter—without admitting any wrongdoing of course. A year later, he agreed to pay $2 million to various charitable entities to settle the case.
Why does this matter? Well, if Trump says the “number one” reason to vote for him is his charity, but his charity was so rife with fraud that it had to be shuttered…
Of course this dissolution of his small foundation was only a foreshock to the 2023 case which found Donald and The Trump Family liable for decades-long fraud schemes. That trial resulted in the cancellation of the Trump Organization’s business certification and fines of nearly half a billion dollars.
Btw: Not only was The Trump Foundation a fraud, but it turns out that most of Trump's claims about giving anything to charity over the decade were probably lies. Much of what we know about his relationship to charity, including the above, was unearthed by ace investigative reporter David Fahrenthold; he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his findings. The incidents he discovered are fascinating, such as the time Trump rented a tent at his house to Muammar Gaddafi.
Dive Deeper
The Washington Post describes the charity's shutdown
CNN details the settlement
Here’s Trump’s kickoff announcement
Here's Fahrenthold's telling of the questionable charitable gift claims
Check out the details of Fahrenthold's Pulitzer Prize, including more of his reporting on Trump's supposed charitable giving.