Also on Tuesday, 16 Democrats from the House Judiciary Committee signed a letter to US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, urging her to investigate the circumstances of Mr Trump’s campaign contribution to Ms Bondi to determine whether it violated federal bribery laws.
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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened a general inquiry into the Trump Foundation to address whether or not the Foundation has made accurate disclosures and whether or not it has followed state law.
“[Trump] calls it a broken system, honest people would call it a transaction between Pam Bondi and Donald Trump”, Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.) said. “This is clearly a politically motivated attempt to distract from all of Hillary Clinton’s issues”.
Trump’s campaign has repeatedly raised questions about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s own nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation, and its ties to foreign leaders.
The Trump campaign has not made any public statements about the NY investigation.
“My interest in this issue really is in my capacity as regulator of non-profits in NY state”, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told CNN. The Washington Post reported that “On the day that Trump and the other parties told the court that they had settled the case, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made its first and only donation to the Martin B. Greenberg Foundation, for $158,000”. Trump aides earlier acknowledged the donation was a mistake.
The Trump Foundation on its 2013 tax return then incorrectly reported that the $25,000 was paid not to the pro-Bondi political group, but to a similarly named charity in Kansas that got no Trump money. But Trump did pay a $2,500 penalty to the IRS this year because charities are not allowed to give to political causes. In fact, tax records show no gifts at all from Trump to the Trump Foundation since 2008.
Trump’s campaign and its surrogates have come out against Schneiderman, a staunch liberal and frequent Trump critic, saying the investigation is a transparent political ploy created to damage the candidate before the November 8 general elections. Bondi and Trump insist they did nothing wrong. She later said she was wrong to describe half of Trump’s supporters that way, but she didn’t back down from describing his campaign as largely built on prejudice and paranoia.
Bondi, who has endorsed Trump, has called the AP report misleading.
Bondi, of course, denies any wrongdoing, but no one in Florida is buying her excuses. Americans will choose between Trump and Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton during the presidential election on November 8.
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Hicks also provided no information about how much – if any – of the donations she described came from Trump’s own pocket.
