Hillary Clinton, who has been under fire over questions of whether donors to her family’s foundation were given special access, blasted Trump during a talk with reporters Tuesday.
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The gift, which Bondi personally solicited, was granted just four days after she announced that she might join the NY state attorney general’s fraud probe into the now-defunct Trump University.
On Wednesday, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway found herself fending off questions from George Stephanopoulos of ABC on whether her boss used a big political donation to sway Florida’s attorney general into skipping an investigation into Trump University, reports Politico. But last week’s Washington Post report that Trump had paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty for the “improper” contribution sparked renewed scrutiny, quickly followed by a “he-said, she-said” disagreement this week over whether Trump and Bondi had ever actually discussed the affair.
But since taking to the campaign trail, Trump has taken a very different tone, saying that he was buying politicians at the time with his many donations and saying that proved politics was corrupt. Trump Foundation made the payment four days after a newspaper reported Bondi’s office was considering opening up a formal investigation into the now-defunct Trump University, which it never did. The check to Bondi’s PAC, furthermore, was written by the Trump Foundation, which is an illegal political contribution. Under federal law, charities are prohibited from making political donations. According to The Associated Press, the two spoke “several weeks” before the contribution came in, though a Bondi spokesman told the AP she was not aware of Floridians’ problems with Trump University at the time.
Cavuto pushed forward and wondered if Bondi was denying accusations of soliciting a donation from Trump, and she stumbled in response before saying, “Of course I asked Donald Trump for a contribution, that’s not what this is about”.
While rejecting any allegations of wrongdoing on his part, Trump continued to attack “Crooked Hillary” because some donors to the Clinton Foundation got meetings with Clinton when she was secretary of state. A donation from the Trump Foundation came a few days later, and Bondi’s office subsequently declined to investigate the organization or join a NY lawsuit against Trump University. He gave money to politicians in order to control his decisions to get favorable results. It’s true. They kiss my ass. But we continue to hear nearly nothing about what happened between Donald Trump and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi. Trump and Stone paid the largest fine levied by NY lobbying regulators at that time, while never admitting guilt. I’ve served in both worlds and know the difference between them.
The use of Mar-a-Lago alone was a donation of some value.
A look back at Trump’s history of political giving shows that his donations followed his business interests, much more than they followed any political philosophy. Bondi, also a Republican, has endorsed Trump’s White House bid.
– There was never any recommendation by the staff to investigate or sue Trump University in 2013, and consequently, the matter never rose to the attorney general’s level for any decision of any kind.
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“Any prosecutor knows – and Pam Bondi was a prosecutor in Tampa before she ran for political office – that a prosecutor can not be a politician when performing their law enforcement duties. Never spoken to her about it, never”.
