The New York Attorney General’s office is looking into whether the Donald J. Trump Foundation has violated any laws that apply to charities operating within the state, according to news reports.
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And in another move, the foundation made an illegal US$25,000 donation to a campaign group affiliated with Florida Attorney-General Pam Bondi in 2013 as she was considering joining Mr Schneiderman’s case against Trump University.
For another, the Trump Foundation seems to have repeatedly defied the Internal Revenue Service rules that govern nonprofits.
Schneiderman recently filed a lawsuit against Trump University, and in an interview with CNN, said the Manhattan billionaire’s charitable foundation is also under examination.
Schneiderman said his office has been ‘concerned that the Trump Foundation may have engaged in some impropriety from that point of view’.
The Post, citing tax records from the Trump Foundation, noted Trump has not made a donation to his own charity since 2008.
Following news of the investigation, Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser for the Trump campaign, called Schneiderman “a partisan hack who has turned a blind eye to the Clinton Foundation for years and has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president”.
Schneiderman, a Democrat, has sued Trump in the past. He said most of the students who enrolled in the Trump University seminars left satisfied with the business training they received.
New York’s attorney general says he is investigating Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s foundation over suspected “impropriety”.
The timing of the Bondi donation was also questioned because it came as her office was looking into whether to join NY and several other states in litigation against Trump University, the candidate’s for-profit business seminars that some former attendees complained were a scam. Charities are forbidden under USA tax law to make political donations and the foundation was fined $2,500. Both Bondi and Trump have denied any wrongdoing, saying the donation did not lead to any favors.
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Clinton’s stumble, captured on amateur video and seen online and on television, gave Trump a new opening to question her fitness for the nation’s highest office as the race intensifies. “The other candidate’s foundation took money other people gave to his charity and then bought a 6-foot tall painting of himself”. And yesterday, House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether bribery occurred.
