Orange Is The New Trump: GOP Nominee May Have Committed Crimes By Using Charity As Slush Fund

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:05 pm

Don't Miss Sarah Jones's Essay On Kristi Noem Titled Predatory Is The Point On The Daily.

Fresh on the heels of banning the Washington Post for daring to tell the truth about his failure to pay the veterans’ charities the 1 million dollars he claimed he had already donated to them, Donald Trump finds himself in more hot water.

Wait, this is after Trump claimed he raised 6 million dollars for vets. That wasn’t true either. Confronted, Trump denied ever saying it. Video proved otherwise.

After some Trump-style petulant blustering, during which he claimed he didn’t have to show the fourth estate any proof of his claims, Trump vague ghosted himself out of the convo with the Post post haste and then banned the esteemed paper. Like a real busted liar freedom lover would.

So cut to today.

Today the angry little Oz is in more trouble for failure to follow the rules and laws of the country he thinks he’s qualified to run.

Tim Mak and Andrew Desiderio reported for the Daily Beast that Trump might have broken the law numerous times with his foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation that is strictly prohibited from engaging in political activity (unlike a 501(c)(4) for social welfare groups, which are allowed to do some political activity).

When the presumptive GOP nominee doled out money to veterans’ groups over the past few months, he did so using the Trump Foundation—which, according to FEC and IRS rules, should not be engaged in political activity.

The Trump Foundation, Donald Trump’s nonprofit organization, is under fire for allegedly operating as more of a political slush fund than a charity. The foundation is accused of violating rules prohibiting it from engaging in politics—prompting ethics watchdogs to call for public investigations.

Oopsie.

This is looking like that time in 2013 when the Trump foundation donated a substantial amount to Florida AG Pam Bondi’s SuperPac as she was deciding whether or not to pursue charges against Trump University. Guess who got a lot of money and decided NOT to go after Trump University? uh huh.

Bondi has endorsed Trump and everyone moved on happily. Except Trump forget to disclose this little donation to the IRS.

A mistake. A clerical mistake, he claimed. But the Daily Beast pointed out that one of Trump’s lawyer is a former FEC chairman.

But really, ignorance of the laws guiding foundations and campaigns isn’t a great look for a man running to be president. An even worse look is blatantly not caring about the laws and behaving as if he is above them.

In fact, it looks like the foundation activity might have crossed the line into illegal, per the Daily Beast:

But in key early primary states this year, Trump handed out Foundation checks to charities at campaign rallies. This also calls into question “whether the foundation provided the campaign with an illegal in-kind contribution by providing services for what was a campaign event. Under the campaign finance laws… providing anything of value to a campaign for free or at less than fair market value is a contribution to the campaign,” said Larry Noble, the general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center.

Probably Trump will just ghost and ban the Daily Beast now but like most of his “solutions”, this too would be empty posing.

Trump has already blacklisted the Daily Beast and banning a publication isn’t going to stop the press from covering him or stop the government from making sure the foundation is following the law.

Donald Trump is in for a very rude surprise if he thinks he can run for president while breaking the law or majorly violating IRS rules. Of course if his end game is to monetize his presidential run, then he would continue behaving as he is. The road to the White House is paved with suckers ready to buy what Donald Trump is selling.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Connect with Sarah on Post,  Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.