Scumbag trum used charity's money to settle losing warsuits

[Dafinch]

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/09/trump_used_charitys_money_to_s.html

Can this scumbag avoid getting indicted before he gets his ass kicked on November 8th? This is unbelievable...

Trump used charity's money to settle his legal disputes

Trump with the painting that he bought. (Photo provided by Havi Schanz)


Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire's for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.
Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump's charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against "self-dealing" - which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.
In one case, from 2007, Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Florida, resulting from a dispute over the height of a flagpole.
In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines - if Trump's club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded almost entirely by other people's money, according to tax records.
In another case, court papers say one of Trump's golf courses in New York agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff's chosen charity. A $158,000 donation was made by the Trump Foundation, according to tax records.
The other expenditures involved smaller amounts. In 2013, Trump used $5,000 from the foundation to buy advertisements touting his chain of hotels in programs for three events organized by a District of Columbia preservation group. And in 2014, Trump spent $10,000 of the foundation's money for a portrait of himself bought at a charity fundraiser.
Or, rather, another portrait of himself.
Several years earlier, Trump had used $20,000 from the Trump Foundation to buy a different, six foot-tall portrait.

Trump on NY bombing: 'I called it,' says profiling needed
The Republican presidential nominee went on to praise Israel's policing practices.

If the Internal Revenue Service were to find that Trump violated self-dealing rules, the agency could require him to pay penalty taxes or to reimburse the foundation for all the money it spent on his behalf. Trump is also facing scrutiny from the New York attorney general's office, which is examining whether the foundation broke state charity laws.
More broadly, these cases also provide new evidence that Trump ran his charity in a way that may have violated U.S. tax law and gone against the moral conventions of philanthropy.
"I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I've never encountered anything so brazen," said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington. After The Washington Post described the details of these Trump Foundation gifts, Tenenbaum described them as "really shocking."
"If he's using other people's money - run through his foundation - to satisfy his personal obligations, then that's about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I've seen in a while," Tenenbaum said.
The Post sent the Trump campaign a detailed list of questions about the four cases but received no response.


The Trump campaign released a statement about this story late Tuesday that said it was "peppered with inaccuracies and omissions," though the statement cited none and the campaign has still not responded to repeated requests for comment.
The New York attorney general's office declined to comment when asked whether its inquiry would cover these new cases of possible self-dealing.
Trump founded his charity in 1987 and for years was its only donor. But in 2006, Trump gave away almost all the money he had donated to the foundation, leaving it with just $4,238 at year's end, according to tax records.
Then, he transformed the Trump Foundation into something rarely seen in the world of philanthropy: a name-branded foundation whose namesake provides none of its money. Trump gave relatively small donations in 2007 and 2008, and afterward: nothing. The foundation's tax records show no donations from Trump since 2009.
Its money has come from other donors, most notably pro-wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon, who gave a total of $5 million from 2007 to 2009, tax records show. Trump remains the foundation's president, and he told the IRS in his latest public filings that he works half an hour per week on the charity.
The Post has previously detailed other cases in which Trump used the charity's money in a way that appeared to violate the law.
In 2013, for instance, the foundation gave $25,000 to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R). That gift was made about the same time that Bondi's office was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. It didn't.
Tax laws say nonprofit groups such as the Trump Foundation may not make political gifts. Trump staffers blamed the gift on a clerical error. After The Post reported on the gift to Bondi's group this spring, Trump paid a $2,500 penalty tax and reimbursed the Trump Foundation for the $25,000 donation.
In other instances, it appeared that Trump may have violated rules against self-dealing.
In 2012, for instance, Trump spent $12,000 of the foundation's money to buy a football helmet signed by then-NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.
And in 2007, Trump's wife, Melania, bid $20,000 for the six-foot-tall portrait of Trump, done by a "speed painter" during a charity gala at Mar-a-Lago. Later, Trump paid for the painting with $20,000 from the foundation.
n those cases, tax experts said, Trump was not allowed to simply keep these items and display them in a home or business. They had to be put to a charitable use.
Trump's campaign has not responded to questions about what became of the helmet or the portrait.
The four new cases of possible self-dealing were discovered in the Trump Foundation's tax filings. While Trump has refused to release his personal tax returns, the foundation's filings are required to be public.
The case involving the flagpole at Trump's oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club began in 2006, when the club put up a giant American flag on the 80-foot pole. Town rules said flagpoles should be 42 feet high at most. Trump's contention, according to news reports, was: "You don't need a permit to put up the American flag."
The town began to fine Trump, $1,250 a day.
Trump's club sued in federal court, saying that a smaller flag "would fail to appropriately express the magnitude of Donald J. Trump's . . . patriotism."
They settled.
The town waived the $120,000 in fines. In September 2007, Trump wrote the town a letter, saying he had done his part as well.
"I have sent a check for $100,000 to Fisher House," he wrote. The town had chosen Fisher House, which runs a network of comfort homes for the families of veterans and military personnel receiving medical treatment, as the recipient of the money. Trump added that, for good measure, "I have sent a check for $25,000" to another charity, the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial.
Trump provided the town with copies of the checks, which show that they came from the Trump Foundation.
In Palm Beach, nobody seems to have objected that the fines assessed on Trump's business were being erased by a donation from a charity.

"I don't know that there was any attention paid to that at the time. We just saw two checks signed by Donald J. Trump," said John Randolph, the Palm Beach town attorney. "I'm sure we were satisfied with it."
In the other case in which a Trump Foundation payment seemed to help settle a legal dispute, the trouble began with a hole-in-one.
In 2010, a man named Martin Greenberg hit a hole-in-one on the 13th hole while playing in a charity tournament at Trump's course in Westchester County, N.Y.
Greenberg won a $1 million prize. Briefly.
Later, Greenberg was told that he had won nothing. The prize's rules required that the shot had to go 150 yards. But Trump's course had allegedly made the hole too short.
Greenberg sued.

Eventually, court papers show, Trump's golf course signed off on a settlement that required it to make a donation of Martin Greenberg's choosing. Then, on the day that the parties informed the court they had settled their case, a $158,000 donation was sent to the Martin Greenberg Foundation.
That money came from the Trump Foundation, according to the tax filings of both Trump's and Greenberg's foundations.
Greenberg's foundation reported getting nothing that year from Trump personally or from his golf club.
Both Greenberg and Trump have declined to comment.
Several tax experts said that the two cases appeared to be clear examples of self-dealing, as defined by the tax code.
The Trump Foundation had made a donation, it seemed, so that a Trump business did not have to.
Rosemary Fei, a lawyer in San Francisco who advises nonprofit groups, said both cases clearly fit the definition of self-dealing.
"Yes, Trump pledged as part of the settlement to make a payment to a charity, and yes, the foundation is writing a check to a charity," Fei said. "But the obligation was Trump's. And you can't have a charitable foundation paying off Trump's personal obligations. That would be classic self-dealing."
In another instance, from 2013, the Trump Foundation made a $5,000 donation to the D.C. Preservation League, according to the group and tax filings. That nonprofit group's support has been helpful for Trump as he has turned the historic Old Post Office Pavilion on Pennsylvania Avenue NW into a luxury hotel.
The Trump Foundation's donation to that group bought a "sponsorship," which included advertising space in the programs for three big events that drew Washington's real estate elite. The ads did not mention the foundation or anything related to charity. Instead, they promoted Trump's hotels, with glamorous photos and a phone number to call to make a reservation.
"The foundation wrote a check that essentially bought advertising for Trump hotels?" asked John Edie, the longtime general counsel for the Council on Foundations, when a Post reporter described this arrangement. "That's not charity."
The last of the four newly documented expenditures involves the second painting of Trump, which he bought with charity money.
It happened in 2014, during a gala at Mar-a-Lago that raised money for Unicorn Children's Foundation - a Florida charity that helps children with developmental and learning disorders.
The gala's main event was a concert by Jon Secada.
But there was also an auction of paintings by Havi Schanz, a Miami Beach-based artist. One was of Marilyn Monroe. The other was a four-foot-tall portrait of Trump: a younger-looking, mid-'90s Trump, painted in acrylic on top of an old architectural drawing.
Trump bought it for $10,000.
Afterward, Schanz recalled in an email, "he asked me about the painting. I said, 'I paint souls, and when I had to paint you, I asked your soul to allow me.' He was touched and smiled."
A few days later, the charity said, a check came from the Trump Foundation. Trump himself gave nothing, according to Sharon Alexander, the executive director of the charity.
Trump's staff did not respond to questions about where that second painting is now. Alexander said she had last seen it at Trump's club.
"I'm pretty sure we just left it at Mar-a-Lago," she said, "and his staff took care of it."
The website TripAdvisor provides another clue: On the page for Trump's Doral golf resort, near Miami, users posted photos from inside the club. One of them appears to shows Schanz's painting, hanging on a wall at the resort. The date on the photo was February 2016.

 

[NFLTrends]

So a Charity donating to another charity isnt illegal... spending charity money on rent/furnishings/ etc for the charity isnt illegal...

If it was, Clinton Foundation would be closed down. They spend most of their money on salaries, rent, and "Expenses"...

 

[Dafinch]

So a Charity donating to another charity isnt illegal... spending charity money on rent/furnishings/ etc for the charity isnt illegal...

If it was, Clinton Foundation would be closed down. They spend most of their money on salaries, rent, and "Expenses"...

You don't know how to read, this particular transaction IS illegal, and you're a moron.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Trump used charity's money to settle his legal disputes

 

[GasMan]

Great. Let's put Trump and Hillary in jail before November and start over. Deal.
Now go blow someone.

 

[ScottL]

A warsuit? This sounds like something to wear when stepping into the forum ring.

 

[MantisToboggan]

Great. Let's put Trump and Hillary in jail before November and start over. Deal.
Now go blow someone.

Your mouth to God's ears.

 

[The Guesser]

So a Charity donating to another charity isnt illegal... spending charity money on rent/furnishings/ etc for the charity isnt illegal...

If it was, Clinton Foundation would be closed down. They spend most of their money on salaries, rent, and "Expenses"...

Factually incorrect. Like I tell you often, you need to stop relying on the alt right sites and get unbiased info.


None of the articles cited by Charity Navigator has anything to do with a low percentage of funding going to charitable work.
Another philanthropy watchdog, CharityWatch, a project of the American Institute of Philanthropy, gave the Clinton Foundation an “A” rating.
Daniel Borochoff, president and founder of CharityWatch, told us by phone that its analysis of the finances of the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates found that about 89 percent of the foundation budget is spent on programming (or “charity”), higher than the 75 percent considered the industry standard.



Considering all of the organizations affiliated with the Clinton Foundation, he said, CharityWatch concluded about 89 percent of its budget is spent on programs. That’s the amount it spent on charity in 2013, he said.
We looked at the consolidated financial statements (see page 4) and calculated that in 2013, 88.3 percent of spending was designated as going toward program services — $196.6 million out of $222.6 million in reported expenses.
We can’t vouch for the effectiveness of the programming expenses listed in the report, but it is clear that the claim that the Clinton Foundation only steers 6 percent of its donations to charity is wrong, and amounts to a misunderstanding of how public charities work.


http://www.factcheck.org/2015/06/where-does-clinton-foundation-money-go/

 

[NFLTrends]

Factually incorrect. Like I tell you often, you need to stop relying on the alt right sites and get unbiased info.


[FONT=&]None of the articles cited by Charity Navigator has anything to do with a low percentage of funding going to charitable work.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Another philanthropy watchdog, CharityWatch, a project of the American Institute of Philanthropy, gave the Clinton Foundation an “A” rating.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Daniel Borochoff, president and founder of CharityWatch, told us by phone that its analysis of the finances of the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates found that about 89 percent of the foundation budget is spent on programming (or “charity”), higher than the 75 percent considered the industry standard.[/FONT]



[FONT=&]Considering all of the organizations affiliated with the Clinton Foundation, he said, CharityWatch concluded about 89 percent of its budget is spent on programs. That’s the amount it spent on charity in 2013, he said.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]We looked at the consolidated financial statements (see page 4) and calculated that in 2013, 88.3 percent of spending was designated as going toward program services — $196.6 million out of $222.6 million in reported expenses.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]We can’t vouch for the effectiveness of the programming expenses listed in the report, but it is clear that the claim that the Clinton Foundation only steers 6 percent of its donations to charity is wrong, and amounts to a misunderstanding of how public charities work.


http://www.factcheck.org/2015/06/where-does-clinton-foundation-money-go/[/FONT]

Expenses incurred by the Clinton Foundation, excluding provision for uncollectible pledges,
classified by functional categories for the years ended December 31, 2014 and 2013, were as
follows:
Program Management/ Fund
Services General Raising Total
Salaries and benefits $ 79,937,654 $ 12,835,407 $ 3,114,078 $ 95,887,139
Direct program expenditures 33,689,239 - 3,360 33,692,599
Professional and consulting 13,829,202 1,390,623 2,030,051 17,249,876
Conferences and events 12,687,287 128,611 1,384,249 14,200,147
UNITAID commodities expense 14,196,240 - - 14,196,240
Procurement and shipping 2,549,578 - - 2,549,578
Travel 18,475,724 951,325 1,359,480 20,786,529
Telecommunications 2,278,659 461,714 29,591 2,769,964
Meetings and trainings 13,361,801 138,621 19,402 13,519,824
Bank and other fees 625,735 602,853 176,969 1,405,557
Occupancy costs 5,593,595 1,587,554 116,437 7,297,586
Office expenses 6,192,912 1,464,445 130,779 7,788,136
Capital charges 5,664,204 8,535 - 5,672,739
Depreciation 5,109,564 333,820 32,432 5,475,816
Other 3,516,547 1,484,819 728,602 5,729,968
Totals, year ended
December 31, 2014 $ 217,707,941 $ 21,388,327 $ 9,125,430 $ 248,221,69

Cant paste it directly, it looks scrambled... but you can see for yourself, Page 18 https://www.clintonfoundation.org/sites/default/files/clinton_foundation_report_public_2014.pdf

Basically in 2014 they spent:

$96million on Salaries/benefits
$20million on travel
$14Million on conferences and events
$13million on meetings/training

So those little things add up to $143million... yet they brought in $217million... I just picked the 4 biggest expenses, and that took over 2/3 of what was donated!

 

[Dafinch]

Trump used charity's money to settle his legal disputes

Yeah, I'm sure it is outstanding to YOU, but, then, you're a immoral, moronic, felonious scumbag.

 

[Dafinch]

Great. Let's put Trump and Hillary in jail before November and start over. Deal.
Now go blow someone.

NO deal, Blubber Belly, your guy has already been fined and is being investigated, HRC is in the clear, no matter how much it galls you to admit it.
Geez, you're an ignorant cocksucker, aren't you? All you know about is guzzling beer and banging STD-ridden hookers, right?

(Gas Bag getting his swerve on, right before 60 seconds of Blubber Belly ecstasy for the working girl)

 

[NFLTrends]

NO deal, Blubber Belly, your guy has already been fined and is being investigated, HRC is in the clear, no matter how much it galls you to admit it.
Geez, you're an ignorant cocksucker, aren't you? All you know about is guzzling beer and banging STD-ridden hookers, right?

(Gas Bag getting his swerve on, right before 60 seconds of Blubber Belly ecstasy for the working girl)

How is Hillary in the clear when the FBI is also investigating the Clinton Foundation?

 

[Dafinch]

Counting the foundation, the article cites 10, count 'em, TEN sleezy Rump stories-but, of course, they're ALL bogus according to Righty Whack Jobs:

http://www.vox.com/2016/9/13/12888492/trump-foundation

[h=1]Donald Trump’s surprisingly shady charitable foundation, explained[/h]
Updated by Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias matt@vox.com Sep 20, 2016, 10:42a

Donald Trump runs a charitable foundation named after him that’s been good for his personal business and political aspirations and appears to have no particular philanthropic mission or focus.
It has, however, been used to pay out over a quarter of a million dollars to help settle lawsuits on behalf of Trump's private businesses — just one of several ways in which Trump has used tax exempt nonprofit money in ways that violate the letter or the spirit of the laws governing charity in the United States.

At one point, the Trump Foundation operated like a fairly normal rich person’s poorly managed family foundation, receiving money from its founder and handing it out to this or that randomly selected cause. But in more recent years, as its founder has gotten less interested in real estate development and more interested in media celebrity and politics, it’s become rather unusual.
The Trump Foundation isn’t funded by Trump’s own money. Instead, contributions mostly seem to come from a range of Trump’s business partners, allowing him to parlay celebrity into securing credit for charity work.


But much of the foundation’s spending doesn’t really fit the traditional conception of philanthropy at all. Some of the money seems to flow back into Trump’s pockets through his businesses, while other funds are used to punish his political enemies or try to gain new friends in the conservative movement.


At times the level of self-dealing becomes downright comical. It spent $20,000 on a portrait of Donald Trump, for example, and $12,000 on buying Trump an autographed Tim Tebow helmet. When Trump's Mar-a-Lago club wracked up $120,000 in fines from the town of Palm Beach, Florida for violating a local ordinance regarding the height of flagpoles, Trump eventually settled the dispute by agreeing to a $100,000 donation to a veterans' charity — and then had his foundation rather than the club pay the tab.

Trump has also lied about the foundation repeatedly, claiming credit for charitable contributions that never happened. One illegal thing the Trump Foundation did appears to have been linked to efforts to shield Trump’s fake university from legal scrutiny.


Trump’s Foundation is considerably smaller in scale than the much-more-covered Clinton Foundation, but it also gives every appearance of being much less involved in actually helping people and much more clearly involved in rule-breaking. Yet while the Clinton Foundation has been the subject of dozens of investigations and thousands of takes over a period of nearly a decade (my first Clinton Foundation take was published in October 2007, for example) the Trump Foundation has gone largely unscrutinized.


The vast majority of reporting on it has been done by a single person, David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. And while his reporting has uncovered plenty of wrongdoing and raised plenty of questions, it hasn’t driven cable news segments, follow-up reporting, or even much aggregation.

In that sense, the Trump Foundation both reveals something disturbing about Trump himselfand something disturbing about the functioning of the American media ecosystem, where the basic idea that you should have a similar number of reporters covering each campaign creates a skewed view of what’s actually going on.
[h=3]What does the Trump Foundation do?[/h] The Trump Foundation does not have what you would call a clear and straightforward charitable mission. It doesn’t focus on a particular social problem or set of social problems. Instead, it reflects the shifting agendas of its notoriously mercurial founder.
For example, back in 2014 the Trump Foundation made a $100,000 contribution to David Bossie’s conservative activist group Citizens United.
At this time, New York attorney-general Eric Schneiderman was launching a fraud prosecution against Trump and Trump University. Bossie and Citizens United, meanwhile were suing Schneiderman in federal court over his effort to require nonprofits like Citizens United to disclose their donors under seal to the New York State Charities Bureau. The lawsuit was dismissed, and it’s hard to characterize this as a quid pro quo since Bossie’s interest in the cause of nontransparent political fundraising is well-known and sincere.


But Trump had never previously supported Citizens United, and, as Michael Isikoff reports, the Citizens United donation "was by far the largest it gave to any organization that year, substantially exceeding its contributions to more traditional charities, such as the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (which got $50,000), the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ($25,000) and the Police Athletic League ($25,000)."

Trump, in essence, had an enemy in Schneiderman, so Trump used his foundation money (money which, recall, was not donated out of his own pocket) to help an enemy of his enemy.
Another oddity of the Trump Foundation is that even though it gives the superficial appearance of being a normal family foundation, he doesn’t actually fund it anymore and hasn’t done so for years. Trump is rich, and back in 1988 he created the foundation and bestowed it with the proceeds of his book, Trump: The Art of the Deal. The foundation’s specific undertakings didn’t receive much attention over the years, as Trump wasn’t running for office and nitpicking the details of a wealthy individual’s charitable giving is considered rude. Trump’s campaign has changed that to an extent, and shined some light on a variety of unorthodox practices.
"For one thing," Fahrenthold writes "nearly all of its money comes from people other than Trump. In tax records, the last gift from Trump was in 2008. Since then, all of the donations have been other people’s money — an arrangement that experts say is almost unheard of for a family foundation."

[h=3]Wait — Trump’s foundation isn’t his own money?[/h] That is correct. It’s not unusual for a nonprofit to be primarily financed by donors rather than by the founder, but that’s a very unusual situation for a family foundation.
And, indeed, Trump’s foundation didn’t start out this way. Between 1987 and 2006, Trump gave $5.4 million to his foundation with the vast majority of the money going out the door quickly to a range of fairly banal nonprofits.It never amassed a large war chest, and by the start of 2007 it had just $4,238 in assets. Nor did the Foundation ever hire professional staff or independent directors, relying instead on unpaid work by a five-person board composed of Trump himself, his daughter Ivanka, his sons Eric and Donald, and Allen Weisselberg, the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Foundation. Tiffany Trump did not make the cut for some reason.
Trump’s donations trickled in 2007 and 2008, and from 2009 onward Trump has given no money to the Foundation. Its largest donor, instead, is wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon, who’ve given $5 million as part of a relationship with Trump that’s included him making appearances on their wrestling broadcasts.
Another noteworthy donor is NBC Universal, the company that aired Trump’s television show, The Apprentice (NBC Universal is also an investor in Vox Media, Vox.com’s parent company), on which Trump pledging to make charitable contributions was a regular feature.


As Fahrenthold, writing with Alice Crites, explains:

The same thing happened numerous times on "The Celebrity Apprentice." To console a fired or disappointed celebrity, Trump would promise a personal gift.
On-air, Trump seemed to be explicit that this wasn’t TV fakery: The money he was giving was his own. "Out of my wallet," Trump said in one case. "Out of my own account," he said in another.
But, when the cameras were off, the payments came from other people’s money.
In some cases, as with Kardashian, Trump’s "personal" promise was paid off by a production company. Other times, it was paid off by a nonprofit that Trump controls, whose coffers are largely filled with other donors’ money.
​

As Christine Wilkie of the Huffington Post has detailed, many of the contributions seem to be transactional in a similar way. People Magazine gave $150,000 in exchange for exclusive photos of Trump’s son, Barron. Comedy Central gave $400,000 as an appearance fee for Trump appearing on The Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump. Norwegian Cruise Lines gave $100,000 as an appearance fee for Melania Trump. Depending on whether or not the money was put to good use (more on this later), this could be seen as a form of Trump channeling his celebrity to philanthropic ends or else as not much more than a glorified tax dodge.


Some of the donations reflect ambiguous business relationships. Wilkie reports that Donna Clancy gave the Foundation $100,000 while she was also a tenant at a Trump-owned office building, while the Foundation’s most frequent donor over time is Stark Carpets, a company that Trump uses as a carpet-supplier for many of his buildings.

But while some of the donations to Trump’s foundation seem like a form of thinly disguised employee compensation, others are more enigmatic. The high-end ticket scalper Richard Ebers, for example, is one of the Trump Foundation’s biggest donors, and Ebers declines to comment to the media about it.
[h=3]Who else has Trump given to?[/h] Over the years, Trump’s foundation certainly has given money to a grab-bag of basically banal uncontroversial charities. But since 2012, the Trump Foundation has given a lot of money to conservative political groups as part of Trump’s effort to establish his bona fides in the movement. This is perfectly legal — the tax code doesn’t draw a distinction between what a normal person would call a "real charity" and what a normal person would call a political advocacy shop — but there is a common sense difference between donations that aim to help people and donations that aim to advance the donor’s own political career.


Some examples gathered by Wilkie:

• $100,000 to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and $35,000 to Samaritan’s Purse, both run by Franklin Graham who later defended Trump during the controversy over his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
• $40,000 to the Drumthwacket Foundation, a charity whose mission is the upkeep of the New Jersey governor’s mansion and whose donors mostly have close ties to Chris Christie.
• Trump sponsored one of Sen. Rand Paul’s trips to Guatemala where the senator in his capacity as a physician performed eye surgeries for needy patients.
• He’s also given money to a grab-bag of second-tier conservative advocacy groups including the American Conservative Union, Justice for All, and the Family Leader Foundation.

The Foundation also engages in a certain amount of what seems to be self-dealing.
Fahrenthold reports, for example:

• Melania Trump paid $20,000 at a charity auction for a portrait of Donald Trump. The Foundation cut the check, and the portrait reportedly landed at one of Trump’s golf courses.
• Trump himself paid $12,000 at a charity auction for a football helmet autographed by Tim Tebow.
• The Foundation also donated money to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, which was clearly illegal and resulted in a fine when it came to light. According to Fahrenthold, "Trump’s staffers said a series of errors resulted in the payment being made — and then hidden from the IRS."

There are also mixed cases, such as Trump giving Foundation money to the Palm Beach Police Foundation, which then in turn spent large sums of money on renting out the Trump-owned Mar-a-Lago resort for its annual gala.
Last but by no means least, the Foundation simply seems to sometimes just not do anything.
"Five times," Fahrenthold reports in a separate story, "the Trump Foundation's tax filings described giving a specific amount of money to a specific charity — in some cases, even including the recipient's address. But when The Post called, the charities listed said the tax filings appeared wrong. They'd never received anything from Trump or his foundation."


In one of the five cases, the phantom donation is related to the paperwork errors that led Foundation money to be sent to the Bondi campaign. But the other four — phantom donations to the Giving Back Fund, Children’s Medical Center in Omaha, the Latino Commission on AIDS, and Friends of Veterans — remain unexplained.

[h=3]Why isn’t this getting covered more?[/h] The seemingly different levels of scrutiny afforded to Trump’s activities versus Hillary Clinton’s is an enduring source of frustration for many grassroots Democrats. It’s certainly a source of frustration for Clinton’s campaign.
The bar for "Clinton Foundation scandal" is so low that a staffer for the Clinton Foundation trying and failing to get a diplomatic passport so that he could help Bill Clinton rescue Americans being held captive in North Korea was played up as a major revelation in the New York Times. Imagine if the Clinton Foundation was flagrantly breaking campaign finance law, making phantom donations to charities that never saw the money, blowing cash on sports memorabilia, and persecuting Hillary Clinton’s political enemies.


The fundamental structure of the national media, however, makes disproportionate coverage somewhat inevitable.

One step in this is that, as University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket writes, the press is almost invariably tougher on front-runners. He cites John Zaller and Mark Hunt, who found that historically "the more popular a candidate was, the more negative coverage he received." All three authors believe this is because "members of the media provide more scrutiny for candidates they expect to win."
That’s not to say reporters and editors deliberately slant coverage against the front-runner. It’s to say that reporters and (especially) editors need to make concrete decisions about resource-allocation. Major news organizations will dedicate resources to raking muck in the vicinity of both Clinton and Trump. Since Clinton has consistently seemed more likely than Trump to win, at the margin more resources are aimed at her.
Scrutiny of Clinton has been relatively narrow — overwhelmingly focused on two big negative narratives about her, one related to her use of a private email server and one related to potential Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest. With lots of resources chasing two stories, both incidents have been examined under a fairly exacting microscope with fairly minor developments and banal revelations getting ample airtime.

People reporting on Trump, by contrast, have an embarrassment of riches to pursue. There’s his campaign team’s ties to the Russian government, his mismanagement of Atlantic City casino properties, the possibility his wife worked illegally in the United States without a proper visa, credible allegations that his modeling agency employed illegal workers, Trump’s past business ties to the mafia, his employing of undocumented Polish workers on construction sites, his long history of racist statements, his campaign’s flirtations with anti-Semitism, and his history as a discriminatory landlord.
On top of that — there’s the foundation.
As a simple matter of math, to cover the Trump Foundation as thoroughly as the Clinton Foundation has been covered while also giving all of these other issues their due would require news organizations to devote many more resources to Trump-investigations than to Clinton-investigations. To people in Clinton’s corner, that seems appropriate — Trump has done more investigation-worthy stuff. But from a journalistic traditionalist’s point of view, that would be a form of bias. And, indeed, a perverse form of bias since Clinton is probably going to be president — it’s more important to investigate her.


[h=3]A Trump administration will be a cesspool of self-dealing[/h] Media narratives aside, the bottom line is this: There is every reason to believe that if Donald Trump is elected president, his administration will be a vehicle for his own personal enrichment.
The key to making this argument isn’t any kind of investigation into the Trump Foundation, it’s the basics of Trump’s business ownership. Many past presidents have been rich, but their wealth has typically taken the form of passive ownership of financial instruments. The standard practice is to put the assets — stocks and bonds and such — into a blind trust that is managed independently of the president so he can’t know what he is specifically invested in.
Trump has not promised to liquidate his assets and put the proceeds into a blind trust. He has simply said that day-to-day management of the Trump Organization will be passed on to his children, people who are already key advisers in his political operation anyway. While out on the campaign trail, Trump has been open about his continued involvement in Trump business affairs, stopping by for the opening of a golf resort in Scotland and the construction of a hotel in Washington, DC.


The fact that Trump is openly funneling campaign money to Trump-owned businesses further clarifies that Trump does not have a problem mixing business and politics. And the fact that Trump has refused to release any of his tax returns or do meaningful financial disclosure on who exactly he owes money to further confirms that Trump is maintaining no pretense of running a transparent operation.
It’s 100 percent true that everything Fahrenthold and others have uncovered about the Trump Foundation suggests that Trump will use the powers of the presidency to benefit his businesses. But even if you’d never read any coverage about the Trump Foundation, the basic lack of personal financial disclosure and unwillingness to promise he’ll shift to a blind trust if he wins is all a person worried about conflicts of interest need to know. Trump is telling you, quite openly, that as president there will be no meaningful separation between the Trump Organization and the Trump administration.
That this doesn’t seem to bother many of the people who are voting for Trump — even as many of those same people complain about "Clinton cash" and other much more second-order alleged conflicts of interest — is legitimately frustrating. But there’s little reason to believe that a few more stories about Trump’s use of charitable money to buy a Tim Tebow helmet will change that.

 

[Dafinch]

How is Hillary in the clear when the FBI is also investigating the Clinton Foundation?

Well, there is the small matter that AG Lynch said no charges will be brought, and the "explosive" additional emails released almost 3 weeks ago haven't yielded jack shit-if they had something, you can bet your bottom dollar it would've been leaked. YOUR scumbag is being sued by thousands of people in multiple cities, has been fined by the IRS, and the AG is ramping up investigation the disgraceful, brazen bribe Rump paid to that blonde bimbo in Florida who somewhat became the state's AG. But you pretend otherwise if it makes you happy, lol...

 

[NFLTrends]

Well, there is the small matter that AG Lynch said no charges will be brought, and the "explosive" additional emails released almost 3 weeks ago haven't yielded jack shit-if they had something, you can bet your bottom dollar it would've been leaked. YOUR scumbag is being sued by thousands of people in multiple cities, has been fined by the IRS, and the AG is ramping up investigation the disgraceful, brazen bribe Rump paid to that blonde bimbo in Florida who somewhat became the state's AG. But you pretend otherwise if it makes you happy, lol...

Gary Johnson isnt being sued by thousands of people in multiple cities..... Post those!!.. If you cant, it proves just how clueless and out of touch with reality your dumbass is. Since you live in Vegas, we can each post up $1000, and take an IQ test at one of the testing centers here in town, at the same time, and see how actually is smarter.

Take me up on the bet? OR just going to make up some excuse, and throw an insult?

 

[festeringZit]

Gary Johnson isnt being sued by thousands of people in multiple cities..... Post those!!.. If you cant, it proves just how clueless and out of touch with reality your dumbass is. Since you live in Vegas, we can each post up $1000, and take an IQ test at one of the testing centers here in town, at the same time, and see how actually is smarter.

Take me up on the bet? OR just going to make up some excuse, and throw an insult?

I'd be willing to bet that DuhhhFinch is the dumbest poster in here. But, I'll take some action on that bet on NFLTrends if it happens.

 

[superbeets]

[h=6]- SEPTEMBER 21, 2016 -[/h][h=1]​A TALE OF TWO RALLIES: SEPTEMBER 21, 2016[/h]

High Enthusiasm For Mr. Trump In Ohio While Clinton Struggles To Draw A Crowd In Florida


Hillary Clinton Rally In Orlando, Florida crowd size: “About 300.” (Orlando Weekly, 9/21/16) ​

(Source: Twitter.com)


Donald J. Trump Rally In Toledo, Ohio crowd size: “More Than 2,000.” (WTVG-TV, 9/21/16)​

(Source: Twitter.com)​

 

[superbeets]

Charlotte NC


A fabulous example of

 

[superbeets]

 

[Dafinch]

Gary Johnson isnt being sued by thousands of people in multiple cities..... Post those!!.. If you cant, it proves just how clueless and out of touch with reality your dumbass is. Since you live in Vegas, we can each post up $1000, and take an IQ test at one of the testing centers here in town, at the same time, and see how actually is smarter.

Take me up on the bet? OR just going to make up some excuse, and throw an insult?

Wtf does Gary Johnson have to do with any of this, you ignorant prick????? You're evidently drunk, as well as being stupid, but, sadly, you'll still be stupid in the morning...