Trump Suffers Massive Defeat As AG Forces Foundation Shut Down

In a huge defeat for Trump, the New York AG has forced the shut down of the Trump Foundation under judicial supervision as the criminal case moves on.

Attorney General Barbara Underwood said:

Our petition detailed a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.

Today’s stipulation accomplishes a key piece of the relief sought in our lawsuit earlier this year. Under the terms, the Trump Foundation can only dissolve under judicial supervision – and it can only distribute its remaining charitable assets to reputable organizations approved by my office.

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This is an important victory for the rule of law, making clear that there is one set of rules for everyone. We’ll continue to move our suit forward to ensure that the Trump Foundation and its directors are held to account for their clear and repeated violations of state and federal law.

MSNBC’s Ari Melber explained why this is a win for prosecutors and a loss for Trump, “This is significant. This grows out of all of those debates and reporting we’ve seen from The Washington Post and elsewhere about how the foundation was being accused of being a slush fund for Donald Trump’s other interests, personal and political. That itself can be illegal. What we’re seeing here is the triumph of the New York A.G. Who has more than one investigation going in basically saying yes, this foundation’s busted. Trump had moved previously, okay, I’ll scrap the whole thing and runoff. The guy who never settles, the guy who is a mass negotiator. What then happened is the New York A.G. Said, no, we want that under court supervision. We want to have the files. The normal things you’d want. This today is a victory for the New York attorney general and a loss for Trump.”

Video:

Trump and his family spent years trying to claim that their foundation wasn’t engaged in criminal activity and is used as a personal slush fund, but reporters found that very little of the money was going to charity and that Trump had been using the foundation to illegally coordinate with his presidential campaign.

The walls are closing in. Prosecutors at all levels are winning, as the Donald Trump “empire” is dissolving before our eyes.

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