Bookbinder says the timing of Trump’s gift was also suspicious, coming just days after a newspaper reported that Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office was reviewing a lawsuit the state of NY had filed a few weeks earlier against Trump University.
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Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, center, has come under fire for taking a $25,000 donation from Donald Trump‘s charitable foundation as her office weighed whether to join a lawsuit against Trump University. Also, on the Trump Foundation’s tax filings from that year, the contribution to Bondi’s political committee is not listed.
TUR: But it’s the questions about the appearance and timing of an illegal political donation that are now surrounding Trump. And now, Trump’s campaign confirms that Trump paid an IRS fine because of the donation.
Donald Trump says that he had a “thoughtful and substantive” conversation with Mexico’s president on Wednesday as he kicks off a long-awaited speech on immigration.
“It’s a political witch hunt and nobody’s going to bully me by threatening me, accusing me of things that aren’t true into not supporting the candidate of my choice, ” Bondi told News Channel 8’s Keith Cate at the RNC in July. According to a spokesman for Florida’s attorney general: “It wasn’t enough to justify Florida filing suit”.
On Monday aboard her new campaign plane, Clinton weighed in. “Many of the attorney generals turned that case down because I’ll win that case in court”.
Donald Trump and Pam Bondi are defending themselves after the Republication candidate was fined for a donation to the Florida attorney general.
Donald Trump’s ties to Pam Bondi have widened, according to recent reports.
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.
Bondi said she “immediately disclosed” the contribution from Trump in 2013. Thanks to our nutty campaign-finance laws, Trump was perfectly within his rights to send twenty-five thousand dollars to the pro-Bondi group-which went by the name And Justice for All-or so it seems.
“In fairness to Bondi, it is not at all clear whether she knew the details of the investigation when the check was solicited, or whether it influenced her office’s decision”, Gelber writes, but adds that it doesn’t have to. But when word came out that Florida was considering joining the lawsuit against Trump University, Trump quickly-and illegally-funneled $25,000 through the Trump Foundation and got it to Bondi pronto.
Trump recently paid the IRS a $2,500 fine because the foundation’s donation violated the rules governing non-profit groups.
Indeed, Trump’s history of political giving stretches back decades – and has repeatedly drawn regulatory scrutiny. In testimony to the New York State Commission on Government Integrity in 1988, Trump said he did not see anything wrong with it because he assumed others understood what he was doing and that it was what his lawyers suggested. Foreign governments rank among some of the foundation’s most prolific donors, which has been a particular cause for concern among Clinton critics since she announced her campaign, CNN reports.
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“I give to everybody”, Trump said in a Fox News debate last summer.
