trump fdn

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ironic with all smear attacks on clinton fdn what a swamp thing this pow is

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FOREIGN FUNDER

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back in news w/ AG James 200 pp on trump real est /fam

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-contributor-lara-trump-bloodthirsty-ny-ag-letitia-james-caused-children-die-shutting

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NO LNX JOE CONASON

alterne

How Trump corrupted Pam Bondi

Pam Bondi speaks at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 20, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

Joe ConasonNovember 23, 2024

Newspaper profiles of Pamela Bondi -- subbed in as President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney general following the scandalous implosion of Matt Gaetz -- often describe her with a phrase like "longtime loyalist."

The former Florida attorney general's unwavering fealty dates back to September 2013, when a political committee supporting her reelection campaign received a $25,000 check from the Trump Foundation. And the story behind that check foreshadows four more years of exceptionally corrupt administration, when the first felon returns to the White House. It is a tale that revolves around two of the most notorious scams pursued by the president-elect during his career as a "successful businessman," namely the Trump Foundation and Trump University.

Rather than an institution of higher learning, Trump U was a for-profit real-estate seminar that promised easy wealth to the suckers who paid huge sums to learn the Donald's investment secrets and received no instruction of any value whatsoever in return. Over the years before Bondi got that Trump check, thousands of defrauded consumers had complained to her office, demanding action.

And just three weeks earlier, then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman finally had announced the filing of a massive fraud case on behalf of New Yorkers ripped off by Trump University. According to Tristan Snell, the assistant attorney general handling the case, they hoped Florida would join New York's lawsuit "because it opened up the possibility that, if needed, we could pursue additional witnesses and documents" in the Sunshine State, where subpoenas would require Bondi's assistance.

Evidently that possibility also occurred to someone in the Trump Organization. Four days after the dramatic New York filing, Trump executive assistant Rhona Graff sent an email to the Bondi campaign finance director, seeking details of how to make a donation. Made out to "And Justice For All," the ironically named Bondi PAC, that donation arrived by mail on Sept. 13, 2013, along with a note signed by Trump that misspelled the candidate's name as "Biondi" and declared, "Dear Pam, You are the greatest!"

The check was drawn on the Trump Foundation -- a tax-exempt nonprofit organization prohibited from giving money to political campaigns or partisan committees. That was merely one of many examples of Trump's abuse of his foundation's tax-exempt status.

You may have surmised by this point that the Florida attorney general blew off her New York colleagues in seeking justice for the Trump U victims. Snell recalls that after sending the case documents to Tallahassee, "we never heard from the Florida AG's office again."

None of that hindered the legal team led by Snell -- one of very few officials ever to hold Trump accountable -- from winning a $25 million settlement from the Trump Organization after the 2016 election. The proceeds reimbursed Trump's victims for roughly 80% of what they had lost. Two years after he coughed up that punishing payment, the New York attorney general's office came after the Trump Foundation again, charging that its charitable activities were nonexistent and that its expenditures benefited Trump himself.

In the humiliating conclusion of that lawsuit, his lawyers agreed their client would shut down the foundation and pay the remaining millions in its accounts to bona fide charities.

So egregious were the depredations of Trump U that Republicans felt obliged to condemn its swindling. The National Review ran a scathing investigative report headlined "Yes, Trump University Was a Massive Scam." Sen. Marco Rubio, then a Trump rival, denounced Trump U as a "con job," and warned that "we cannot allow a con artist to become the Republican nominee for president of the United States." (The Florida senator's more recent sycophancy has now earned Rubio the opportunity to become secretary of state.)

Every Republican senator who votes to confirm Bondi as the nation's attorney general knows the saga of Trump University. As Snell sardonically asks, "Did Trump just happen to want to make a donation to Bondi a mere four days after the New York AG's case was filed? Really?"

He goes on to demand that journalists and senators interrogate Bondi about this scandal -- and explore its implications for her integrity, her subservience to the president, and her ability to carry out the attorney general's duties.

"We need to make sure this full story gets told -- and any profile of Bondi or analysis of her nomination that does not include this story is itself another example of corrupt complicity." Nobody, in the mainstream media or the United States Senate, should be able to claim they did not know.

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no lnx

Travis Gettys and Raw Story August 26, 2021

Newly revealed records show Donald Trump likely broke the law by issuing a campaign donation to the Florida attorney general investigating his fraudulent university.

The Trump Foundation issued a $25,000 check in 2013 personally signed by the real estate mogul and reality TV star to a political action committee associated with Pam Bondi's re-election campaign, and The Daily Beast obtained new records that dispute Trump Organization denials made when the donation became an issue during the 2016 campaign.

"It kind of blows up their whole story," said Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "The Trump Organization staffers knew they were making this political donation. There are no questions about it. There is no ambiguity."

Libowitiz, whose watchdog group filed the complaint that exposed the scandal, called the evidence "a smoking gun," and the records show Trump Organization employees were explicitly told the donation was made to a political group -- which goes against claims made by chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, campaign officials and Trump Foundation executives.

"I probably didn't know at that time that we probably shouldn't be using foundation funds for this type of thing," said Trump Organization accountant Jeff McConney during a 2017 interview with investigators from the New York attorney general's office. "We made a mistake."

But an email from Aug. 28, 2013, shows Bondi's campaign finance director Deborah Ramsey Aleksander provided the name and federal tax identification number for the "And Justice for All" PAC, which she described as an ECO, or "electioneering communications organization, to Trump's longtime executive assistant Rhona Graff.

"Again, it was a pleasure meeting you today!!! Thanks again for always being so responsive and wonderful to work with." Aleksander wrote to Graff. "Let Mr. Trump know that we are SO VERY thankful for his commitment of 25k and If he wants to make it 50k, that's perfectly acceptable. :) Seriously, thanks again for everything!!!"

Aleksander provided Graff with a copy of the PAC's W-9 form, which lists the group's "federal tax classification" as a "political organization," in a follow-up email on Sept. 11, 2013, and two days later Trump himself sent Bondi a check with a signed letter that misspelled her name and told her "you are the greatest!"

The signed check was issued from The Donald J. Trump Foundation, Inc., in likely violation of Section 501(c)(3) of U.S. tax code, which prohibits political donations by tax-exempt charities.

The Trump Foundation was eventually dissolved after the New York attorney general's office found a "shocking pattern of illegality" and the Trump Organization and Weisselberg were indicted this summer for criminal tax fraud, while Bondi, who reportedly tried to return the donation after it was revealed, never did investigate Trump University, which settled three fraud lawsuits for $25 million in November 2016.

Bondi joined Trump's impeachment defense team shortly after leaving office in 2019.

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/rudy-giuliani-has-a-long-shady-history-with-ukraine/

mojo

In March 2018, Rudy Giuliani met in Manhattan with a delegation of lawmakers from Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million in eastern Ukraine. Giuliani, who joined President Donald Trump’s legal team a few weeks later, was at this gathering because, Giuliani says, his security firm agreed in 2017 to help the city improve its emergency services and seek foreign investment.

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But the deal had a murkier element. Giuliani later conceded that he wasn’t just working for Kharkiv and that for at least some of the work he was paid byPavel Fuks, a Kharkiv-born business executive who became a prominent real estate developer in Moscow in the 2000s and who has said that he negotiated directly with Trump between 2004 and 2010 about building a Trump-branded tower in Moscow. Fuks was one of several Ukrainians with Russian ties whose attendance at Trump’s presidential inauguration was investigated by former special counsel Robert Mueller. So at the start of Trump’s presidency, Giuliani was hobnobbing with at least one Ukrainian player who would be tainted by scandal.

Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine exploded into public view this month, with the revelation that Trump pressured the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to work with Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and information to discredit Mueller’s probe. A complaint filed by an intelligence community whistleblower that triggered this new Trump scandal depicted Giuliani as a Trump henchman prowling Ukraine for negative material Trump could use against Biden. But the former New York mayor’s involvement in Ukraine and other former Soviet bloc countries has been more extensive and even more sketchy than these disclosures indicate.

The New York meeting and an earlier trip Giuliani trip took to Kharkiv in November 2017 were arranged by TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, the firm says on its website. TriGlobal, which claims to have offices in New York, Moscow, and Kiev, sells itself as an international business consultancy that does public relations work for clients in Russia and Ukraine. The firm also brags that it has worked with Giuliani since 2004, arranging trips for him to former Soviet states. Last October, Giuliani took a break from his work representing Trump to speak about cybersecurity at a conference TriGlobal organized in Armenia to promote a Russia-led economic bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union. Giuliani appeared at the event alongside a Russian official, Sergey Glazyev, who was sanctioned in March 2014 for his role in the annexation of Crimea and who has been accused of advancing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Ukraine, an accusation he’s denied. Giuliani was reportedly invited to a conference by Russian Armenian multimillionaire Ara Abramyan, a member of TriGlobal’s board, who reportedly suggested at the time that he expected Giuliani to deliver a message for him to Trump.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Giuliani planned to participate in a panel led by Glazyev at the same conference in Armenia this year. Giuliani canceled his plans to attend after the Post‘s report. He said he decided not to attend after learning that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to go. “If Putin’s going it’s easy,” he said in a text.

These gigs form part of Giuliani’s lucrative post-mayoral career as a roving international security consultant and high-priced lawyer. That career has continued, even after Trump brought Giuliani onto his personal legal team with a mandate to take a combative approach against Mueller’s investigation. Giuliani provides not only pro-bono legal assistance for Trump, but, he says, political advice, and reportedly he acts as somewhat of a personal emissary for the president. All the while, Giuliani has shrugged off questions of whether clients, including foreign interests, are paying him and his firm as he functions as Trump’s consigliere. And he has refused to comprehensively identify his clients. He claims that he does not need to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act—which would require him to disclose details of his work for overseas clients—because he does no lobbying in the United States for foreign entities and instead merely provides security advice to any client he has abroad.

But at least one former client disputes Giuliani’s claims about his work. “I would call him the lobbyist for Kharkiv and Ukraine—this is stated in the contract,” Fuks told the New York Times in March. “It is very important for me that such person as Giuliani tells people that we are a good country, that people can do business with us. That’s what we would like to bring to America’s leaders.” Neither Giuliani nor Fuks has made their contract public. Giuliani has declined to say what he and his firm were paid for the work.

Seven Senate Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), pressed the Justice Department this week to investigate whether Giuliani is violating foreign lobbying law. “Like any other American, Mr. Giuliani has legal obligations to report his work on behalf of foreign clients,” they wrote, “and the Department of Justice should not give him preferential treatment or exempt him from his obligation just because he is the President’s personal attorney.”

Giuliani conducted other business in Ukraine while working for Kharkiv and Fuks. In June 2017, Giuliani traveled to Kiev where he reportedly met with then-President PetroPoroshenko, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, and other government officials. Giuliani also spoke on “democracy” and the “rule of law” at a conference organized by the foundation of Ukrainian metals magnate, Victor Pinchuk—an oligarch whose 2016 payment of $150,000 to Trump’s charitable foundation drew scrutinyfrom Mueller. Giuliani, who in 2006 reported receiving up to $200,000 per speech, has declined to say how much he he was paid for that presentation. It’s unclear if these activities had any connection to Giuliani’s deal with Fuks and Kharkiv.

In a text message Thursday, Giuliani said his work in Ukraine in 2017 was unrelated to his recently revealed activity. “My business in Ukraine ended in Dec. 2017,” he wrote. But Giuliani’s involvement in the country continued after he became Trump’s lawyer in April 2018.

In May 2018, Ukrainian officials stopped investigating payments to Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort and dropped an offer to assist with Mueller’s prosecution of him. Ukrainian officials told the New York Times they feared helping Mueller would anger Trump, potentially complicating their purchase from the United States of antitank weapons aimed at deterring Russian aggression. This week Giuliani insisted in a text message to me that he did “not know anything about” that move.

At some point in 2018—the exact date is unclear—Giuliani began working on Ukraine-related matters with two Soviet-born American business executives, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.Giuliani has said they’re his clients, though his work for them appears indistinguishable from his efforts on Trump’s behalf. In a text message on Monday, Giuliani declined to comment on this work, citing attorney-client privilege. Parnas and Fruman did not respond to inquiries.

According to a joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, it was Parnas and Fruman who first encouraged Giuliani’s effort to dig up dirt on Biden. Both Parnas and Fruman, who live in South Florida, became big GOP donors in 2018, giving at least $576,500 in combined donations over several months. They used the resulting access to powerful Republican figures to promote a plan to sell American liquified gas to Ukraine. In May 2018, the duo dined with the president at the Trump International Hotel and had breakfast in Beverly Hills with Donald Trump Jr. and Tommy Hicks Jr., who later became co-chair of the Republican National Committee, according Facebook posts by Parnas, which he later deleted. It is unclear if Giuliani was helped connect them with Trump.

According to the OCCRP/BuzzFeed News report, Parnas and Fruman organized a late 2018 Skype call between Giuliani and Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor whose firing was pushed by Biden and many European diplomats in 2016. Shokin was ousted for blocking anti-corruption probes, but Giuliani and Trump have asserted that Biden sought Shokin’s dismissal to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, from investigation. There is no evidence to support that claim.

But Shokin, not surprisingly, was apparently eager to help smear Biden. Parnas claims that he and Fruman put Giuliani in touch with Shokin’s replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko, late last year. Giuliani and Lutsenko met in New York in January 2018 and in Poland in February, according to the OCCRP/BuzzFeed News report. Giuliani told the Washington Post that he has met with five current and former Ukrainian prosecutors overall, including Shokin and Lutsenko, since last year.

Shortly after their get-togethers, Lutsenko and Giuliani began pushing allegations in the US media about Biden and claiming Ukrainian officials interfered in the 2016 election to help the Hillary Clinton campaign.Many of these claims ended up in articles written by Hill opinion writer John Solomon, whose reports were amplified by Fox News and other conservative media and by Trump—but his reports have largely been debunked. Ukrainian anti-corruption activists claim Shokin and Lutsenko were promoting phony accusations, and Lutsenko later withdrew many of his claims. Daria Kaleniuk, the head of a Ukrainian anti-corruption group, contends that Lutsenko issued allegations to please Trump in a bid to keep his job.

“I was investigating, going back to last year, complaints that the Ukrainian people, several people in Ukraine, knew about a tremendous amount of collusion between Ukrainian officials, and Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee,” Giuliani claimed last week on CNN. Theseaccusations promoted by Giuliani have been embraced by Trump’s Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr.On Wednesday, the Justice Department said that a probe initiated by Barr and run by a US attorney, John Durham, is “exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.”(The nature of this probe is unclear. Ukraine was not involved in the initiation of the FBI’s investigation of the Russian attack on the 2016 election and the interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia.)

According to the Washington Post, since Zelensky took office in May, Giuliani has sidelined the State Department and helped force the firing of the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom he accused, seemingly without evidence, of “collusion” and of “working for” liberal financier George Soros. Trump’s request that Zelensky help Giuliani unearth negative information on Biden has received lots of attention. Zelensky agreeing to do so has received less notice. According to the whistleblower’s complaint, Giuliani met with a Zelenksy adviser on August 2 in Madrid to follow up on “cases” discussed in the July 25 phone call.

Giuliani’s role, particularly his work in Ukraine in 2017 and 2018, has not been fully explained. The whistleblower complaint alleges that Giuliani has been “a central figure” in Trump’s covert effort to use his power to press Ukraine to help tilt the 2020 election in his favor. An unnamed US official quoted by the Post made a similar claim: “Rudy—he did all of this,” the official said. “This shitshow that we’re in—it’s him injecting himself into the process.”

Asked about his work in Ukraine, Giuliani, in a series of texts, called the issue “bull distraction.” Not enough is publicly known yet to back up Giuliani’s this-is-a-distraction defense, or to assess whether Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine will ultimately help Trump or cause him more difficulty in a scandal that has led to an impeachment inquiry.

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wASHINGTON (AP) — An agent of the Qataris. Lobbying for a Kuwaiti firm. A decision to steer clear of a lawsuit against Trump University.

As she prepares to defend President Donald Trump against impeachment and accusations that he pressured a foreign government to aid his reelection campaign, former Florida state Attorney General Pam Bondi is stepping down from a lobbying firm where she represented foreign interests.

The White House announced this week that Bondi is one of two new staffers who will join the White House on a temporary basis to bolster its messaging and communications in response to the impeachment inquiry,which is unfolding at a rapid pace. Next week, the House Intelligence Committee will begin holding public hearings with witnesses as they build their case. The inquiry centers on whether Trump abused his office by withholding military aid and other support to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

Trump wanted Ukraine’s president to publicly commit to investigating Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. He pushed for the investigation while holding up nearly $400 million in military aid.

Helping craft the White House response to the impeachment inquiry will be Bondi, a longtime Trump supporter who stepped down as Florida’s attorney general in January. Since then, Bondi has worked as a lobbyist forBallard Partners, a Washington firm that has touted its influence inside the Trump administration. Her U.S. clients have included General Motors, the commissioner of Major League Baseball and a Christian anti-human-trafficking advocacy group.

Bondi also registered as a foreign agent for the government of Qatar and as a lobbyist for a Kuwaiti firm with a massive Defense Department contract,according to Justice Department foreign agent filings and congressional lobbying documents. Her work with the Qataris was related to anti-human-trafficking efforts leading up to the World Cup, a person familiar with the efforts said.

Bondi is now winding up her work for Ballard Partners, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told The Associated Press. Despite Bondi’s recent work for foreign and domestic interests, Grisham said those ties would not pose any ethics concerns.

“There is no prohibition in the (U.S. government) Ethics Pledge or ethics regulations that would prevent a former lobbyist orformer foreign agentfrom taking an employee position,” Grisham said.

Bondi would have to recuse herself from any matters involving Ballard or other former employers of “matters on which they lobbied,” the press secretary said.

Bondi declined to comment Friday.

Bondi signed on in July as a consultant to Qatar’s U.S. embassy, providing “support regarding Qatari relations with U.S. government officials, U.S. business entities and nongovernmental audiences, in dealing with matters pertaining to combating human trafficking,” according to Justice Department foreign agent filings. A contract amendment shows that her firm was paid $115,000 a monthfor the work she and a second lobbyist performed for the Qatari embassy.

As Florida’s top prosecutor, Bondi stressed human trafficking issues and urged tightening state laws against traffickers. One of her first clients as a Ballard lobbyist was the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking, an advocacy group that describes itself as a “faith-based organizationanointed by God to fight against human trafficking in America.” The group paid Ballard $80,000 this year to lobby the White House and Congress on “anti-human trafficking issues.”

A person familiar with Ballard’s operation said the firm had submitted paperwork to the Justice Department on Thursday to deregister Bondi as a foreign agent for the Qatari Embassy.

Bondi also represented the KGL Investment Company KSCC, a Kuwaiti firm that won a $1.38 billion Defense Department contract in 2018 to provide food, water and other supplies to U.S. troops in Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and Syria. The firm has paid Ballard $300,000 this year to lobby the White House, National Security Council, State Department and Congress on immigration policy, human rights and economic sanctions issues.

The Kuwaiti company has been embroiled in a spate of legal disputes and court actions, including the imprisonment of two of its former executives in Kuwait on embezzlement charges. Ballard and several other lobbying firms working for the company have contacted administration and congressional officials, exploring whether the U.S. could use Magnitsky Act sanctions to target Kuwaiti officials who have been in a long-running dispute with the firm.

Bondi’s clients with foreign interests also included IGT Global Solutions, a subsidiary of an Italian conglomerate that manufactures slot machines and specializes in gaming and lottery software and equipment. She also represented Miami-based cruise line Carnival Corp.

Ballard Partners is also sending letters to Congress to formally end Bondi’s work as a registered lobbyist, though official notification may not be publicly available until the end of this quarter, said the person familiar with the company, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the firm’s internal matters.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Thursday dismissed questions about Bondi’s lobbying, saying, “She’s not here to lobby. She’s here to make sense about how in the world we’re going to impeach or remove a democratically elected president.”

Bondi’s previous dealings with Trump had also raised ethics alarms during her tenure as Florida attorney general.

In September 2013, the nonprofit Donald J. Trump Foundation gave $25,000 to a Florida political committee supporting Bondi’s reelection campaign for attorney general. The donation came at the same time that Bondi’s office was considering whether to join other state prosecutors in suing Trump University, which ran a for-profit real estate seminar, after numerous consumer complaints.

A month later, Bondi announced that she would not be joining in the lawsuits against Trump University. Both the university and the foundation were later closed in response to state government legal actions against them.

The ethics advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington charged that the Trump nonprofit’s donation was illegal because the charity failed to report it, which would have been prohibited under federal rules governing nonprofits such as the Trump Foundation. The nonprofit later told The Washington Post that it had paid a $2,500 fine to the Internal Revenue Service for violating federal tax rules in its donation backing the pro-Bondi political organization.

A judge on Thursday ordered Trump to pay $2 million to an array of charities as a fine for misusing his own charitable foundation to further his political and business interests.

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trump fdn

https://thinkprogress.org/donald-trumps-foundation-gave-20000-james-okeefes-project-veritas-e8fbdb48e16c/

no lnx doc

Trump Foundation funding of James O’Keefe was twice as much as previously reported, per new filings

Donald Trump's "charitable organization" gave even more cash to Project Veritas.

JOSH ISRAEL

NOV 28, 2017, 11:43 AM

Donald Trump defending Roy Moore

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, WHOSE EPONYMOUS FOUNDATION DONATED $20,000 TO JAMES O'KEEFE'S PROJECT VERITAS, DEFENDED ROY MOORE LAST WEEK. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/MANUEL BALCE CENETA

Conservative activist (and convicted criminal) James O’Keefe and his tax-exempt Project Veritas group are under fire again, following a botched “sting” operation in which an employee falsely told the Washington Post that she was raped by Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) as a teenager. The Post did not fall for her trick and instead exposed her for the blatant attempt to discredit the many women who have come forward with their stories of sexual assault.

Last October, ThinkProgress reported that Project Veritas had received a $10,000 donation in 2015 from Donald Trump’s controversial Donald J. Trump Foundation, a theoretically charitable 501(c)(3) organization. This reporting was based on a list of charitable payments provided by the foundation to the Washington Post.

But a ThinkProgress review of the Trump Foundation’s 2015 tax filing finds that it reported making not one but two $10,000 donations to Project Veritas in tax-year 2015.

CREDIT: Donald J. Trump Foundation 2015 IRS Form 990

CREDIT: DONALD J. TRUMP FOUNDATION 2015 IRS FORM 990

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump claimed in a presidential debate that new videos proved that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had “hired people” and “paid them $1,500” to “be violent, cause fights, [and] do bad things” at Trump rallies — a claim based on videos released by O’Keefe that purported to show pro-Clinton activists boasting of their efforts to bait Trump supporters into violent acts. The videos offered absolutely no evidence that Clinton or Obama were aware of or behind the alleged dirty tricks.

TOP ARTICLES

1/5

Sarah Huckabee Sanders derides Mueller investigation

while acknowledging one of its convictions

Now, O’Keefe’s group is targeting the Washington Post, a publication that Trump has repeatedly denounced for its critical coverage of his administration.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

It's hard to read the Failing New York Times or the Amazon Washington Post because every story/opinion, even if should be positive, is bad!

64K

4:57 PM - Jul 23, 2017

Twitter Ads info and privacy

35.4K people are talking about this

And at the same time, Project Veritas is attempting to undermine the credibility of Roy Moore’s real accusers. While most of the Republican Party establishment has distanced itself from Moore in light of nine women coming forward with highly credible allegations that the former Alabama supreme court chief justice sexually assaulted them — one when she was just 14 years old — Trump has continued to back him in the rapidly-approaching special election.

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wapo

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-signed-tax-returns-false-information-under-penalty-perjury-least-4-times

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https://www.alternet.org/curious-campaign-role-donald-trumps-foundation

Nonprofit 101 is that a conventional charity cannot give money to a political campaign. But it’s possible the Donald J. Trump Foundation may have broken this cardinal rule not just once, but twice. And the fact that it happened twice could make a significant legal difference. The first time could be a simple clerical mistake. But when it happens again and the person running the charity is the political beneficiary, that’s a horse of a different color.

Last week, the New York Attorney General sued to dissolve the Trump Foundation because in essence it hasn’t been acting as a true charity. Rather, the suit alleges, Trump’s family, and Donald Trump in particular, have personally benefited from Foundation funds. For example, the complaint alleges Foundation money was used to settle several suits involving Donald Trump’s commercial properties, including the Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. The Foundation also purportedly spent $10,000 to buy a Donald Trump portrait which hung on a wall at the Trump National Doral Miami for two years.

The Foundation’s Board consisted of Mr. Trump, his three adult children, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, and Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, who acted as the Foundation’s treasurer. But the Foundation’s Board is hardly a model of good governance or oversight; it has not met in 19 years, the attorney general contends.In a 41-page petition accompanying the complaint, are allegations that would amount to campaign finance violations. For example, on page 11, the filing alleges that:

In 2016, the Board knowingly permitted the Foundation to be coopted by Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and thereby violated its certificate of incorporation and state and federal law by engaging in political activity and prohibited related party transactions. Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (the “Campaign”), Mr. Trump’s political committee, extensively directed and coordinated the Foundation’s activities in connection with a nationally televised charity fundraiser for the Foundation in Des Moines, Iowa on January 28, 2016 (the “Iowa Fundraiser”), and the disbursements of proceeds from the event.

The petition alleges the Trump campaign directed which charities would receive funds, often for the political benefit of the Trump campaign.

As the petition further alleges on page 20, “The [Trump] Foundation’s disbursement of funds from the Iowa Fundraiser were related-party transactions….the Foundation ceded control over the grants to the Campaign, making an improper in-kind contribution of no less than $2.823 million…to the Campaign that provided Mr. Trump and the Campaign a means to take credit at campaign rallies, press briefings, and on the Internet, for gifts to veterans charities….”

All of this is a legal problem for the Foundation, the 2016 Campaign and Trump, because the Foundation is not allowed to participate in any political campaign, even Trump’s own. And as a matter of federal campaign finance law, Trump’s campaign was not allowed to receive an in-kind donation that large. Nor is a federal campaign allowed to receive money from a corporate source, including a charitable non-profit, under a longstanding law called the Tillman Act.

Moreover, the Trump Foundation paid a $2,500 federal excise tax in March 2016 because of an illegal $25,000 contribution to the 2013 re-election campaign of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. According to the New York attorney general, Trump signed the IRS form reporting the transaction, signed a personal check paying the federal excise tax, and signed another check reimbursing the Foundation $25,000. In other words, the attorney general contends, Trump well knew the laws prohibiting political activity by charitable foundations. The attorney general has sent referral letters to both the IRS and the FEC.One of the reasons the attorney general argues Trump’s violations were “willful and knowing” is because he signed the Foundation’s annual IRS 990 forms which pledge the Foundation’s money was not used for political purposes. Trump “repeatedly signed, under penalties of perjury, IRS Forms 990 in which he attested that the Foundation did not engage in transactions with interested parties, and that the Foundation did not carry out political activity,” the complaint reads.

If Trump loses the case, it could be costly. The complaint asks that Donald Trump pay “up to double the amount of benefits improperly obtained through self-dealing transactions,” which could total about $5.6 million. In addition, the attorney general wants Trump’s children “to account for their conduct in the neglect and violations of their duties in the management and disposition of corporate assets, to pay damages resulting from loss and waste of corporate assets, and should be enjoined from serving as an officer, director or trustees, or in any similar capacity, of any not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated or authorized to conduct business or solicit charitable donations in the State of New York.”

After the suit was announced, it took all of 28 minutes for Donald Trump to respond. On Twitter, his medium of choice, Trump called the filing “ridiculous” and vowed, “I won’t settle this case!” If indeed Trump does not settle, it will be interesting to hear from Trump and his offspring about how a charitable foundation could somehow legally subsidize a presidential campaign.

brennan ctr

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/15/headlines/new_york_sues_trump_foundation_over_repeated_self_dealing

New York’s attorney general filed suit against Donald Trump’s charitable foundation Thursday, accusing the president and three of his children of using the nonprofit for illegal campaign activity and as a virtual piggy bank for “repeated self-dealing.” Among other charges, the lawsuit alleges the Trump Foundation used charitable funds to illegally coordinate with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, to settle lawsuits against Trump family businesses and even to purchase a $10,000 portrait of Donald Trump hung at one of Trump’s golf resorts. In another case, the charity paid $32,000 to cover costs related to property owned by Trump. The suit seeks to bar Donald Trump from serving on a nonprofit board for a decade and to prevent Ivanka, Eric or Donald Trump Jr. from similarly serving for one year. The lawsuit also opens the door for IRS action against the Trump family—including civil penalties and possible criminal charges.

James O’Keefe,the conservative operative whose discredited video “stings” have resulted in him paying massive fines and apologizing to his targets, is up to his usual stunts. This time, O’Keefe’s Project Veritas—a hilarious name for an organization that has nothing but contempt for the truth—is taking aim at anti-Trump activists and critics. The group’s latest con, which takes a page right out of the FBI’s 1960s COINTELPRO book, involves attempts at bribing progressive activists to disrupt inauguration activities, creating violence, sowing discord and generating lots of bad press for conservative media to gloat over. Unfortunately for O'Keefe, two left-leaning groups conducted a video counter-sting that caught him and his would-be accomplices in the act.

Huffington Post reports that after getting wind of O’Keefe’s effort, members of the Undercurrent and Americans Take Action set up hidden cameras to document the kinds of underhanded dealings the group had planned. In footage released by the Undercurrent, O’Keefe-aligned conspirator Alison Maass—who gained fame last August for trying, and failing, to infiltrate Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold’s campaign—is captured trying to enlist recruits in the right-wing scheme. She tells an activist her group has “unlimited resources” to pay a rabblerouser willing to create enough chaos to “put a stop to the inauguration...interrupt the parties.” In a video that suggests the pricetag for said acts rises as high as $500,000, Maass explains what would satisfy O’Keefe.

“He’d like to turn on some TV, and maybe not even see Trump,” Maas says in one of the clips from the video below. In another she states that a shutdown of the inauguration would make O’Keefe “ultimately the happiest, and wanting to open up his wallet.”

The counter-sting video is just the first in a series Americans Take Action is set to release uncovering O’Keefe’s sleazy methods. Executive producer Lauren Windsor says there’s more where that came from.

O’Keefe became a right-wing darling in 2009, after his phony sting on ACORN, a community organization and voter registration group doing the kind of good work for poor people that infuriates Republicans. The resulting footage, deceptively edited to make it look as if ACORN workers were engaging in unethical and illegal activities, resulted in a media firestorm, which led to the group being defunded and wiped out of existence. In the months that followed, it became clear that the video was hamfistedly cut together to present an altogether different picture than the truth. In 2013, O’Keefe was ordered to pay $100,000 and offer a public apology to a former ACORN employee.

The fact that O’Keefe’s methodology has serious ethical issues and demonstrates a willingness to lie to produce the desired political ends must be what attracted Donald Trump and his campaign team. Numerous outlets report that the Trump Foundation gave O’Keefe’s organization $10,000 to get dirt on supporters of Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign. Trump also invited O’Keefe to a presidential debate last October. American Family Voice was among the groups O’Keefe attempted to frame as part of his anti-Democratic videos earlier this year.

O’Keefe has stumbled and bumbled through a series of would-be stunts, resulting in a number of failures that have made the news. Back in 2010, still basking in the light of his ACORN win, he tried to prank CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau, but she found out right before the shoot started. As part of a ludicrous series titled “To Catch a Journalist”—which at least implies he recognizes he doesn’t doesn’t deserve the title—O’Keefe became the unintended punchline of his own joke, and was laughed out of the halls of Columbia Journalism School. Last year, one of O’Keefe’s agents failed to nail a Clinton campaign staffer for international T-shirt sales; at a “press conference” O’Keefe held, one journalist asked, “Is this a joke?” In May, O’Keefe attempted one of his pranks against the Open Society Institute (George Soros is right-wing enemy number one), but failed after he forgot to hang up a phone and accidentally left a voicemail giving his plan away.

Ryan Clayton, the progressive activist who helped carry out the counter-sting on O’Keefe’s latest project, told the Huffington Post he was honored to help out. “It was my pleasure to work with the highly skilled operatives who pulled off this reverse sting of political conman James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas cohorts.”

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//bondi

WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott received a $35,000 donation to his successful gubernatorial campaign from Donald Trump. This after a Texas probe into Trump University was dropped in 2010, according to the Associated Press.

The AP reported that Abbott, a Republican, was serving as Texas Attorney General at the time, and opened a civil investigation of "possibly deceptive trade practices" into Trump University, but quietly dropped it when the organization agreed to end its operations in Texas.

Trump subsequently donated $35,000 to Abbott's successful gubernatorial campaign, according to records obtained by the AP.

The AP reported that a spokesman for Abbott declined to comment.

Former Texas Official: Abbott Not Involved in Trump University Decision

Trump University guides unsealed this week by a federal judge in southern California undercut Trump's portrayal of his one-time real estate seminar course as an uncontroversial operation. Instead, the manuals reflect boiler-room sales tactics -- the proceeds of which went largely to Trump.

The manual for the staff at Trump University events was precise: The room temperature should be 68 degrees. Seats should be arranged in a theater-style curve. And government prosecutors had no right to see any documents without a warrant.

Instructing employees how to stall law enforcement investigations might seem like an unusual part of running a real estate seminar company. But at Trump University -- which drew investigations by Democratic and Republican attorneys general alike -- it was par for the course.

One guide encouraged staff to learn prospective enrollees' motivations in order to better sell them on products: "Are they a single parent of three children that may need money for food?" the guide asked. When people balked at paying for expensive courses, the suggested response for Trump University staff was harsh.

"I find it very difficult to believe you'll invest in anything else if you don't believe enough to invest in yourself and your education," the guide offered as a recommended response.

Those who bought into Trump University ended up paying as much as $34,995 for what was purported to be private mentoring with supposed real estate experts -- some of whom Trump himself later acknowledged were unqualified.

"It's fraud. ... straight-up fraud," said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman during an MSNBC interview on Thursday morning.

Schneiderman is suing Trump over Trump University in separate but similar case.

"He was clearly in charge of pitching this scam university to people," said Schneiderman.

With past Trump-affiliated business failures and controversies, Trump has often distanced himself by noting that his only financial involvement was a branding agreement. In the case of Trump University, however, Trump's ownership is not in dispute — Trump wanted the business for himself.

When future Trump University President Michael Sexton pitched Trump on the deal, he wanted to pay Trump a flat fee in a licensing deal. Trump rejected that, Sexton said in a deposition.

Trump "felt this was a very good business, and he wanted to put his own money into it," said Sexton, who ended up receiving $250,000 a year from Trump to run a business in which Trump held more than a 90 percent stake. The design of the Trump University operating agreement "was entirely in the hands of the Trump legal team," Sexton said.

Other court records and depositions showed that Trump and senior members of the Trump Organization were responsible for reviewing and signing all checks — and that Trump withdrew at least $2 million from the business.

Trump reviewed the advertising for Trump University's courses, Sexton said. And he did not believe Trump ever looked at what the three-day seminars included.

"Mr. Trump is not going to go through a 300-page, you know, binder of content," Sexton said.

The impression of Trump's involvement given to potential customers was quite different, according to a script for Trump University telemarketers.

"You know who my boss is, right?" the script reads. "Mr. Trump is on a mission to create the next wave of independently wealthy entrepreneurs in America. Is that YOU?"

Trump has defended Trump University by citing surveys in which 98 percent of students reported being pleased with the program. But those surveys took place before students had experienced the full program and were not anonymous, plaintiffs lawyers have said. A higher percentage demanded refunds later.

As scores of students complained that Trump University was a ripoff, the Better Business Bureau in 2010 gave the school a D-minus, its second-lowest grade. State regulators also began to take notice.

Besides the probe that led to Schneiderman's suit, and Abbott's investigation, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi briefly considered joining with Schneiderman in a multi-state suit against Trump University.

Three days after Bondi's spokeswoman was quoted in local media reports as saying the office was reviewing the New York lawsuit, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made a $25,000 contribution to a political fundraising committee supporting Bondi's re-election campaign.

Bondi, a Republican, soon dropped her investigation, citing insufficient grounds to proceed. [just hired by trump for impeach war room?

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https://newrepublic.com/article/152751/trump-exposed-grifter-trump-foundation-charity-scam

Donald J. Trump Foundation was an audacious grift, even by the standards of its namesake. Charitable foundations are supposed to operate under a simple premise: They receive certain tax exemptions when it comes to receiving and disbursing their funds, and in turn, those funds will be funneled into good works for society’s benefit. For Trump’s charity, however, those good works largely amounted to crass self-enrichment—a guiding principle throughout the president’s life and political career.

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The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold reported two years ago that the Trump Foundation’s most generous expenditure, totaling $264,361, went to renovations for a fountain outside the Trump-owned Plaza Hotel in New York City. Its smallest contribution—just $7—appears to have been used to pay for Donald Trump Jr.’s registration fee for the Boy Scouts of America. In one instance, Trump auctioned off a six-foot-tall painting of himself to charity, then spent $20,000 from the foundation’s funds to purchase it.

New York thinks it can find a better use for the money. Barbara Underwood, the state’s attorney general, announced on Tuesday that the president agreed to shut down the foundation and let state officials disperse its remaining funds to genuine charitable organizations. “This is an important victory for the rule of law, making clear that there is one set of rules for everyone,” Underwood said in a statement announcing the agreement. Her office is still pursuing more than $2 million in restitution from Trump and restrictions on his family’s involvement in non-profit organizations in the state.

An investigation by Underwood’s office uncovered a clear pattern of instances where the Trump family misused charity funds.The foundation cut checks for well-publicized donations during Trump’s presidential campaign, transmogrifying charitable funds into politically beneficial expenditures. It shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle legal disputes involving Trump himself or his companies. Normal safeguards like an active board of directors, standard accounting practices, and grant-making policies did not exist. The charity itself, investigators said, “is little more than an empty shell.”

“In sum, the Investigation revealed that the Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments to not-for-profits from Mr. Trump or the Trump Organization,” the attorney general’s office said in a lawsuit this summer. “This resulted in multiple violations of state and federal law because payments were made using Foundation money regardless of the purpose of the payment. 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.”

Though the Trump Foundation was an impressively brazen scheme, it’s far from the only one bearing the president’s name. Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle a multi-state class-action lawsuit against Trump University, his now-defunct real-estate seminar program. Court filings showed how the seminars preyed on customers’ financial anxieties so they would fork over thousands of dollars for mundane lessons about buying and selling property. This undercut Trump University’s main selling point: that “students” would be able to draw upon its eponymous founder’s reputation for savvy real-estate deals.

Even this reputation isn’t grounded in anything, though. The underlying basis of Trump’s political career is his public image as a self-made real-estate magnate. Careful scrutiny by journalists and investigators, however, has shown this to be largely mythical. It wasn’t business acumen that helped Trump establish a foothold in New York real estate in the 1980s and 1990s, but a steady infusion of at least $413 million from his father through dubious tax practices. Trump’s inflated reputation is a source of income in and of itself. Many of the overseas hotels bearing his name don’t even belong to him: He simply licenses his image to real-estate developers overseas, giving a branding edge to them and a reliable stream of profit to him.

You’d be hard-pressed to find an aspect of the president’s life that isn’t marked by grifting. The Trump campaign and its allies heard multiple offers of assistance from Kremlin-linked figures while Trump’s personal lawyer tried to secure a hotel deal in Moscow. His inaugural committee later raked in more than $100 million—more than twice the sum of his predecessors—from wealthy donors that largely went unaccounted for. A ProPublica investigation found that the Trump Organization may have overcharged the committee for use of Trump’s Washington hotel, raising questions about whether any illegal self-enrichment took place. (Federal prosecutors are reportedly investigating the matter.) Foreign governments have also poured money into the Trump Organization’s properties, which may violate a constitutional ban on federal officials receiving foreign profits.

Ironically, some of these schemes likely would have gone unnoticed if Trump had never run for president. Fahrenthold, of the Post, began his Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation into Trump’s charitable donations after then-candidate Trump handed out oversized checks to veterans’ groups in campaign stunts. And the illegal hush-money payments that eventually led former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to start cooperating with the federal prosecutors likely wouldn’t have been made if Trump wasn’t trying to win the presidency. Becoming president has subjected Trump’s hollow empire to a level of scrutiny that he never imagined. The question is whether any of it will remain by the time he leaves, or is forced from, the White House.

Matt Ford is a staff writer at The New Republic.

@fordm

Law, Politics, Donald Trump, Trump Organization, Corruption, Michael Cohen

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