If there’s smoke around the Clinton Foundation, Trump’s is a five-alarm inferno
Donald Trump loves to call the Clinton Foundation a corrupt enterprise that places Hillary Clinton at the center of an international pay-for-play scheme.
True, there are questions there. This editorial board has decried the fact that more than half of the private citizens she met with while Secretary of State were Clinton Foundation donors, and that details of meetings with foundation donors and Wall Street honchos were scrubbed from her official calendar.
Still, we’ve seen no credible evidence of favors changing hands, pay-for-play style.
Lots of smoke, as Clinton herself has acknowledged. But no fire.
Over at the Donald J. Trump Foundation, the Washington Post has uncovered a raging inferno of dealings that look downright illegal, not just ethically shady.
Relentless digging by the Post’s David Fahrenthold revealed that Trump took $258,000 in charity funds donated to his foundation and used the money to settle his own business lawsuits.
For instance, Fahrenthold obtained a canceled $100,000 Trump Foundation check that was used to settle a dispute Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club had with the town of Palm Beach, Fla., over the size of a flagpole. The check bears Trump’s signature.
And in a true Trumpian flourish, the vain real estate mogul even spent $30,000 of his charity’s money on two big paintings of himself.
It all seems a blatant violation of federal tax laws that prohibit what’s called “self-dealing” by nonprofit officials – using charity money on themselves or their businesses.
Furthermore, he might well have ducked paying income taxes after people who owed him $2.3 million for various goods and services were told to pay his foundation.
That’s called “assignment of income,” and it is legal, but you must pay taxes on that income.
If he intentionally diverted the money to dodge taxes, that could be a criminal offense.
To top it all off, Fahrenthold revealed on Friday that Trump’s charity doesn’t even have the basic certification the state of New York requires before a charity can solicit money from the public. Authorities could make the foundation stop raising money and give back money it has raised.
If the IRS were to find that Trump violated “self-dealing” rules, it could make him pay penalty taxes, as he did earlier this year after the Post uncovered his foundation’s improper $25,000 gift to a political group helping Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Trump has proudly declared that he loves using “other people’s money” – or “OPM,” as he told one of his rally crowds. Who knew he’d be so cheap and callow as to do it with charity money, too?
The New York Attorney General’s office is investigating. The IRS should, too, if it isn’t already.
Trump’s people insist the Post’s stories are riddled with “inaccuracies and omissions,” but they haven’t pointed out any major errors.
There is one way he could prove the Post wrong – by releasing his tax returns, which would in theory show that he paid the taxes he should have paid.
Then again, if he didn’t, maybe he thinks that’s “smart” – same as not paying any taxes at all, as he hinted during the debate.
Don’t count on seeing those tax returns – ever. And rest assured, a routine IRS audit is the least of Trump’s tax problems.
This story was originally published September 30, 2016 at 5:52 PM with the headline "If there’s smoke around the Clinton Foundation, Trump’s is a five-alarm inferno."