New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman has ordered US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s charitable foundation to stop soliciting donations in the state.
The Trump Foundation was issued with a “notice of violation” and directed to cease and desist seeking donations after an investigation by the state’s highest-ranking law enforcement official found the charity failed to register with the state’s charities bureau and to file annual financial statements.
The letter, sent on Friday, informed the New York billionaire's foundation that it "shall be deemed a continuing fraud upon the people of New York" unless it submitted the required paperwork in 15 days. The Washington Post reported the day before that the foundation did not have the required state certification that would allow it to seek funding from members of the public.
The newspaper’s reporter David Fahrenthold has been investigating the charity for months and recently reported how the foundation, funded exclusively by outside donations since 2008 when Mr Trump gave his last donation, has been used to settle legal actions taken against the property developer and his business interests in payments that could be deemed as “self-dealing” violations.
When Mr Schneiderman, a Democrat backing Mr Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton to be president, began investigating whether donations to the charity were being passed off as contributions from the businessman, the Republican’s campaign team accused him of being a “partisan hack” for turning a blind eye to the activities of the Clinton Foundation, her family’s charity.
In response to Mr Schneiderman’s letter on Friday, a Trump campaign spokeswoman said: “While we remain very concerned about the political motives behind AG Schneiderman’s investigation, the Trump Foundation nevertheless intends to co-operate fully with the investigation.”
IRS fine
The IRS fined Mr Trump $2,500 (€2,200) for using “Donald J Trump Foundation” funds to make a $25,000 donation to Florida’s attorney general Pam Bondi in 2013, four days after it was reported that her office was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University.
Ms Bondi, who is supporting Mr Trump’s presidential bid, decided not to open a case against him.
The Republican candidate is on the defensive having to explain pledges he has made to charities that have not been honoured and facing continuing questions over his finances and his failure to release his tax returns, breaking with a tradition for every presidential nominee since the 1970s.
Mrs Clinton ripped into Mr Trump at a rally less than 48 hours after the New York Times reported that he may have avoided paying personal taxes for up to 18 years due to a loss of $916 million reported in 1995 on bad investments and losses on his casino businesses.
“What kind of genius loses a billion dollars in a single year?” she said at a campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio – a key swing state in the US presidential election. She was responding to a claim by Trump supporter, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, that his use of tax laws made him a genius.
“Trump was taking America with both hands and leaving the rest of us with the bill,” she said. “He’s taken corporate excess and made a business model out of it.”
On Sunday, in response to the New York Times story, Mr Trump tweeted that his knowledge of the tax laws as a businessman made him the right candidate to be president.
“I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them #failing @nytimes,” he wrote.
