Donald and Eric Trump ran kids’ cancer charity like a “drug cartel’s money-laundering operation”
It’s long been documented that Donald Trump ran his own nonprofit Trump Foundation like a personal piggy bank, illegally using it for everything from paying off lawsuit settlements to buying a six foot tall painting of himself. In fact his Foundation is in the process of being dismantled by the New York State Attorney General. But it turns out robbing one charity wasn’t enough for Donald, who has now been caught outright stealing money from his son Eric’s cancer charity for kids.
That’s the story from Forbes, which dug into the Eric Trump Foundation and found that Donald Trump spent years bilking it. For instance the nonprofit group would hold charitable golf tournaments at Donald Trump’s golf course, and once he realized he wasn’t profiting from it, he started billing the charity for use of the course. Donald ended up bilking the charity to the tune of six figures, which he then spread around to other entities.
Forbes concludes that this behavior on the part of Donald Trump “seems to defy federal tax rules and state laws that ban self-dealing and misleading donors” (link). But it gets worse.
At one point Donald Trump was charging the Eric Trump Foundation for use of the golf course, and then he was having his own Donald Trump Foundation donate part of the money back to the Eric Trump Foundation, a move which makes no legitimate financial sense and points to something behind hidden. Forbes compares it to “a drug cartel’s money-laundering operation.” While it’s not clear whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for this kind of thing while he’s in office, Eric Trump may be a different story.
Even as Donald Trump was stealing money from Eric Trump’s cancer charity, Eric was telling anyone who would listen that the golf course was being used for free and that one hundred percent of donations were going directly to kids. If Eric was willfully lying in order to get people to fund his nonprofit organization, then New York State can (and likely will) go after him for it. And to answer your next question, no, the president cannot pardon anyone on state-level charges.
