In its tax filings to the IRS, the Trump Foundation then reported no political giving: The $25,000 donation was listed as a contribution to a different organization, a Kansas group called “Justice for All”, which the CFO said was a mistake made by accountants. More controversially, however, Bondi’s office was at the time mulling whether to join a NY state probe into allegations that customers who paid thousands of dollars to Trump University, Trump’s for-profit education company, for a real estate investment course were ripped off. Trump’s efforts to boost her politically came during and after a period when Bondi was under pressure to pursue allegations that those seminars were defrauding consumers.
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Isn’t it bad about those connections between the candidate’s foundation and charitable donations that changed hands in what appeared to be play-to-pay?
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed to NBC News that Trump had paid the fine but dismissed the incident as “minor”.
So Pam Bondi got $25,000 directly from Trump, an even bigger check from Ivanka, more checks from both Trump and Ivanka, and a big money fundraiser at Trump’s expense. Never spoke to her about that at all. But since Trump’s nonprofit is a private foundation, it’s not supposed to give money to political groups.
“As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do”, he told The Wall Street Journal a year ago. “Trump Association donated $25,000 to a super PAC tied to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as her office was considering a fraud investigation into Trump University”, reported Katy Tur on NBC Nightly News.
DONALD TRUMP: I give to everybody.
“They self-reported, they corrected immediately, and Donald Trump paid that full price back – every single penny”, Ms. Huckabee Sanders said. When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them.
“You said recently, quote, “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do, ‘” Fox News” Bret Baier said to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“The rules are clear: a tax-exempt charitable foundation can not support a political group”, the group’s executive director Noah Bookbinder said in a news release at the time of the complaint. After New York A.G. Eric Schneiderman received complaints, he filed a civil suit against Trump University, labeling it a “bait-and-switch” scheme.
And a few days later, this contribution from the Trump Foundation comes in to a group supporting Attorney General Bondi.
Three years ago the Attorney General of NY filed a fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump for operating Trump University, the university that was not a real university. It’s certainly something that we think ought to be investigated. Not Bondi. She promised to “vigorously defend Florida’s law banning gay adoption”. In that moment, Bondi’s office studied the possibility of opening an investigation for fraud on Trump University.
Florida resident Kenneth Lafrate claims that the Trump Institute scammed him out of roughly $7,000, most of which paid for a mentoring program.
Trump: “I never spoke to her” …
In other words, Floridians could join New York’s lawsuit.
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Hillary Clinton escalated her attacks on Donald Trump’s character and qualifications for the presidency Tuesday, seizing on renewed scrutiny of an improper political donation that Trump made to Florida’s attorney general as she accused him of concealing “scams”.
