Trump Loses Lawsuit, Ordered To Pay $2M To Nonprofits After Violating Charity Laws

Pay up, Mr. Trump.


578
578 points

A judge in New York just ordered “president” Donald Trump to fork over $2 million for misusing his charitable foundation. Trump and charitable just don’t seem to belong in the same sentence. The Washington Post reported nearly three years ago that the Trump Foundation’s most generous expenditure totaled $264,361, but that went to renovations for a fountain outside the Trump-owned Plaza Hotel in New York City. Trump has always been self-serving. It’s what he does. The smallest contribution was for $7 that that money used to pay for Donald Trump Jr.’s registration fee for the Boy Scouts of America.

At one point, Donald Trump auctioned off a six-foot-tall painting of himself to charity, then he turned around and spent $20,000 from the foundation’s funds to purchase it.

It was a scam, much like his failed university.  The judge ordered Trump to pay the $2 million — which must be paid by Trump himself — to a group of nonprofit organizations as part of a settlement in a civil lawsuit stemming from persistent violations of state charity laws (see above).

The order stems from a New York attorney general complaint that alleged the Trump Foundation conflated charity with politics,  according to Yahoo! News. Barbara Underwood, the state’s attorney general, announced in 2018 that the “president” had agreed to shut down the foundation due to illegal misconduct. The lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation, according to Reuters, also sought to ban Trump and his three eldest children from leadership roles in any other New York charity.

“I direct Mr. Trump to pay the $2,000,000, which would have gone to the Foundation if it were still in existence, on a pro-rata basis to the Approved Recipients,” the judge wrote.

Underwood’s office previously uncovered a clear pattern in which the Trump family misused charity funds while ignoring safeguards like an active board of directors, accounting practices, and you know, pretty much any of the things an actual charity has in place. It was a grifting operation and Trump still hasn’t changed, and his supporters can’t see it. Probably because they are the mark.

He’s in his 70s  and still hasn’t learned to keep his greedy little hands out of the cookie jar.

Featured image via Political Tribune gallery

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