New York files suit against President Trump, alleging his charity engaged in ‘illegal conduct’
The New York attorney general filed suit against President Trump and his three eldest children Thursday, alleging “persistently illegal conduct” at the president’s personal charity, saying Trump repeatedly misused the nonprofit organization — to pay off his businesses’ creditors, to decorate one of his golf clubs and to stage a multimillion-dollar giveaway at his 2016 campaign events.
In the suit, filed Thursday morning, Attorney General Barbara Underwood asked a state judge to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation. She asked that its remaining $1 million in assets be distributed to other charities and that Trump be forced to pay at least $2.8 million in restitution and penalties.
Underwood said that oversight of spending at Trump’s foundation was so loose that its board of directors hadn’t met in 19 years, and its official treasurer wasn’t even aware that he was on the board.
Instead, she said, the foundation came to serve the spending needs of Trump — and then, in 2016, the needs of his presidential campaign. She cited emails from Trump campaign staff members, directing which charities should receive gifts from the Trump Foundation, and in what amounts.
Underwood also asked that Trump be banned from leading any other New York nonprofit organization for 10 years — seeking to apply a penalty usually reserved for the operators of small-time charity frauds to the president of the United States.
In the suit, Underwood noted that Trump had paid more than $330,000 in reimbursements and penalty taxes since 2016. New York state began looking into the Trump Foundation in response to an investigation by The Washington Post.
But she asked the judge to go further, and require Trump to pay millions more. She said a 20-month state investigation found that Trump had repeatedly violated laws that set the ground rules for tax-exempt foundations — most important, that their money is meant to serve the public good, not to provide private benefits to their founders.
“This resulted in multiple violations of state and federal law,” she wrote in the legal complaint.
Underwood was promoted to attorney general only weeks ago, succeeding Eric Schneiderman (D) after he resigned following allegations that he had physically abused several romantic partners.
“The sleazy New York Democrats, and their now disgraced (and run out of town) A.G. Eric Schneiderman, are doing everything they can to sue me on a foundation that took in $18,800,000 and gave out to charity more money than it took in, $19,200,000. I won’t settle this case!” he wrote, adding: “Schneiderman, who ran the Clinton campaign in New York, never had the guts to bring this ridiculous case, which lingered in their office for almost 2 years. Now he resigned his office in disgrace, and his disciples brought it when we would not settle.”
The Trump Foundation has no employees. On Thursday, Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for Trump’s company, responded on its behalf. She echoed Trump’s assertion that this was a politically driven lawsuit, saying: “This is politics at its very worst.”
Underwood is a career staff member, not an elected official. She has said she will not seek election for a full term as attorney general in the fall. She declined to comment on the case beyond issuing a written statement.
“As our investigation reveals, the Trump Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality,” she said in the statement.
Underwood said she had sent letters to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission, identifying what she called “possible violations” of tax law and federal campaign law by Trump’s foundation.
Underwood has jurisdiction over the Trump Foundation because the charity is based at Trump Tower in Manhattan and is registered in New York state.
Trump has been president of the foundation since he founded it in 1987. In late 2016, he had promised to shut it down — but could not while the attorney general’s investigation continued.
Three of Trump’s adult children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump — also were named in the lawsuit because they have been official board members of the foundation for years. Under the law, Underwood said, board members are supposed to scrutinize a charity’s spending for signs that its leader — in this case, their father — was misusing money.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...80389a4e569_story.html?utm_term=.9ff29a3c9f49