President Trump is closing his personal money-laundering operation charity that used donations as if they were the president’s personal money while doing little if anything to actually help anyone other than the president.
What’s baffling is that in 2016, shortly before Russia would hand Big Kompromat the election, Trump claimed that he was going to shut down the Trump Cartel Trump Foundation citing a conflict of interest.
“The Foundation has done enormous good works over the years in contributing millions of dollars to countless worthy groups, including supporting veterans, law enforcement officers and children,” Trump said in the statement, according to The Washington Post. “However, to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President I have decided to continue to pursue my strong interest in philanthropy in other ways.”
On Tuesday, despite claiming some two years ago that he would shut his embattled foundation down. Trump agreed to end the tax-evasion front charitable organization only after the state attorney general forced his hand.
According to The Washington Post, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood called bullshit on the fraud foundation’s claims and noted that the whole scheme foundation, from the stairs to the ceiling, served little purpose other than lining the president coffers.
In an agreement reached with Underwood, Trump would distribute the “foundation’s remaining financial assets — totaling around $1.8 million at the end of 2017, according to tax forms — to other nonprofit organizations. The foundation will also be required to sell its remaining assets and donate the proceeds.”
The Post notes that the taxpayer theft ring charity only owns three items: “two large portraits of Trump (of course!) and the Tim Tebow football helmet. Trump purchased the helmet at a charity auction in 2012 and paid $12,000 and then posed for pictures in all the New York gossip columns showing off with Tebow’s helmet.”
First, Tim Tebow probably has a bunch of signed helmets sitting around his fourth-floor walkup apartment that he can’t give away. Secondly, Trump paid twelve thousand dollars for a FUCKING HELMET using his CON GAME’S FOUNDATION’S MONEY!
In all, the foundation spent $42,000 of charitable donations on two big pictures of a life-sized asshole and a goddamn helmet. No report on how much the foundation spent adding this attachment to it:
Trump now claims that all three items aren’t worth more than $975 according to a recent Internal Revenue Service filing, USA Today reports.
The Post reports:
The Post’s reporting showed that, for years, Trump appeared to use the foundation — which was, by law, an independent entity — to make payments that bolstered his interests.
The largest donation in the charity’s history — a $264,231 gift to the Central Park Conservancy in 1989 — appeared to benefit Trump’s business: It paid to restore a fountain outside Trump’s Plaza Hotel. The smallest, a $7 foundation gift to the Boy Scouts that same year, appeared to benefit Trump’s family. It matched the amount required to enroll a boy in the Scouts the year that his son Donald Trump Jr. was 11.
The attorney general’s investigation turned up evidence that Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump — all listed as officers of the charity — had never held a board meeting. The board hadn’t met since 1999. The charity’s official treasurer, Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg, told investigators that he wasn’t aware that he was on the board.
And none of this stopped Trump from rage-tweeting about being forced to shut down the foundation that didn’t serve anyone but himself. Yes, Trump is mad about being forced to shut down the foundation he willingly said he shut down some two years ago.
And like most things with Trump, his rage-tweets were filled with lies. The Trump Foundation has not done great work, unless of course, he means that it was another source of income for the Trump family, then technically that isn’t a lie.
The Hill reports:
He argued that he was targeted by state Democrats, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo and former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who resigned in May amid allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse. His successor, Barbara Underwood, also a Democrat, brought a lawsuit against the charity a month later.
Trump repeated his inaccurate claim that Schneiderman led former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign efforts in New York in 2016. The then-attorney general backed Clinton, but did not work for her campaign.
Trump once claimed that he’d fight this lawsuit until the end, well it looks like that was also bullshit as Underwood found that the entire foundation was much like Trump’s time in the White House.
“Mr. Trump used charitable assets to pay off the legal obligations of entities he controlled, to promote Trump hotels, to purchase personal items, and to support his presidential election campaign,” she said.
So now, Trump has been ordered to pay $2.8 million in restitution plus penalties, and Trump’s three oldest children — Donald “Not Ivanka” Trump Jr., Ivanka “Contempo Casuals” Trump, and Eric “Vampire Face” Trump can’t serve on the boards of any New York charities, which is fine by them since they never served on the Donald Trump Ponzi Scheme Trump Foundation.