NY A.G. Lawsuit Accuses Trump Foundation Of “Self-Dealing”
The New York state attorney general’s office filed a scathingly worded lawsuit on Thursday taking aim at the Donald J. Trump Foundation, accusing the charity and the Trump family of sweeping violations of campaign finance laws, self-dealing and illegal coordination with the presidential campaign.
The lawsuit, which seeks to dissolve the foundation and bar President Donald Trump and three of his children from serving on nonprofit organizations, was an extraordinary rebuke of a sitting president. The attorney general also sent referral letters to the and the Federal Election Commission for possible further action, adding to Trump’s extensive legal challenges.
The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, culminated a nearly two-year investigation of Trump’s charity, which became a subject of scrutiny during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. While such foundations are supposed to be devoted to charitable activities, the petition asserts that Trump’s was often improperly used to settle legal claims against his various businesses, even spending $10,000 on a portrait of Trump that was hung at one of his golf clubs.
The foundation was also used to curry political favor, the lawsuit asserts. During the 2016 race, the foundation became a virtual arm of Trump’s campaign, email traffic showed, with his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski directing its expenditures, even though such foundations are explicitly prohibited from political activities.
The attorney general’s office is seeking the Trump Foundation to pay $2.8 million in restitution, the amount raised for the foundation at a 2016 Iowa political fundraiser. At the time, Trump skipped a Republican debate and set up his own event to raise money for veterans, though he used the event to skewer his opponents and celebrate his own accomplishments.
Trump immediately attacked the lawsuit, characterizing it in a Twitter post as an attempt by the “sleazy New York Democrats” to damage him by suing the foundation, and vowing not to settle the case — much as he did when the same office filed a lawsuit accusing Trump University. (Trump in 2016 paid a $25 million settlement to resolve the inquiry.)
The $10,000 portrait of Trump was one of “at least five self-dealing transactions” facilitated by the foundation, according to the attorney general’s office, violating tax regulations that prohibit using nonprofit charities for private interests.
In 2007, to settle a dispute between the city of Palm Beach and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the foundation paid $100,000 to the Fisher House Foundation, another charity.
In 2012, a man named Martin B. Greenberg sued the Trump National Golf Club after he made a hole-in-one at a fundraising golf tournament that had promised to pay $1 million to golfers who aced the 13th hole, as he did. As part of a settlement, the charitable foundation paid $158,000 to a foundation run by Greenberg.
The foundation also paid $5,000 to one organization for “promotional space featuring Trump International Hotels,” and another $32,000 to satisfy a pledge made by a privately held entity controlled by Trump to a charitable land trust.
The foundation lawsuit, and the referrals to the federal agencies, are the latest of Trump’s voluminous legal challenges, starting with the ongoing investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, into ties between Trump, his associates and Russia.
The attorney general’s action is also likely to embolden critics who have accused Trump of flouting legal norms. Trump has suggested he might pardon himself in the Mueller investigation and has repeatedly assailed the FBI.
“As our investigation reveals, the Trump Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality,” said Barbara D. Underwood, New York’s attorney general, who has been on her job little over a month. “This is not how private foundations should function and my office intends to hold the foundation accountable for its misuse of charitable assets.”
Many of the examples cited in the lawsuit were first reported by The Washington Post.
Numerous state and federal laws preclude nonprofit organizations and charities like the Trump Foundation from lobbying, aiding a political campaign, or giving undue benefits that further a person’s self-interests, rather than that of the organization. The restrictions are in place to ensure that donations are used for the expressed purpose of the nonprofits; violations can result in penalties, including revocation of the organization’s nonprofit status.
The petition notes that Trump himself signed annual IRS filings, under penalty of perjury in which he attested that the foundation did not engage in political activity. “This statutory prohibition is absolute.”
Yet after the Iowa fundraiser, Trump’s foundation “ceded control over the charitable funds it raised to senior Trump campaign staff, who dictated the manner in which the foundation would disburse those proceeds, directing the timing, amounts and recipients of the grants,” according to the petition.
That same month, an official at the foundation emailed Lewandowski, who was Trump’s campaign manager at the time, telling him “we should start thinking about how you want to distribute the funds collected.”
Lewandowski, in a reply, wrote that “I think we should get the total collected and then put out a press release that we distributed the $$ to each of the groups.” He later sent a list of veterans’ groups “purportedly approved by Mr. Trump to receive grants from the Foundation.”
The list was created by another campaign staffer, Lisa Maciejowski Gambuzza, and edited by a third, Stuart Jolly, a political director. And Lewandowski asked that some of the disbursements be made in Iowa in the days before that state’s presidential nominating caucuses, which mark the kickoff of the primary calendar.
Allowing the campaign to control the spending of the foundation’s charitable funds represented coordination between the two entities, as well “as an improper in-kind contribution of no less than $2.823 million (the amount donated to the foundation) to the campaign,” according to the lawsuit.
Beyond the restitution, the foundation and its directors could face several million dollars in additional penalties, depending on how the court rules. The attorney general’s office is also seeking to bar the president from serving as a director, officer or trustee of another nonprofit for 10 years.
