Trump Foundation

[ClydeR]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfqTMt_U8AEc2Eh.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfqTN6oU0AACztC.jpg





Trump says his charity gave out more money than it took in. How do you do that?

[cwolff]

Wasn't trumps platform about "Draining the swamp"? Maybe he just meant corruption within the District of Columbia specifically and was not speaking about corruption in other places like New York.


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.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/new-york-files-suit-against-president-trump-alleging-his-charity-engaged-in-illegal-conduct/2018/06/14/c3cbf71e-6fc9-11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html

[Methais]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfqTMt_U8AEc2Eh.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfqTN6oU0AACztC.jpg





Trump says his charity gave out more money than it took in. How do you do that?

Donate some yourself? Go shave your legs Latrin.

[ClydeR]

Barring an unexpected change, the Donald J. Trump Foundation will be defending itself in a New York courtroom shortly before this fall’s midterm elections. The proceedings seem unlikely to go well for the institution and its leadership; President Trump and his elder children, Ivanka, Donald, Jr., and Eric, are being sued by New York’s attorney general, Barbara Underwood, for using the charity to enrich and benefit the Trump family. On Tuesday, the judge in the case, Saliann Scarpulla, made a series of comments and rulings from the bench that hinted—well, all but screamed—that she believes the Trump family has done some very bad things.

The judge seemed frustrated, even confused, that the Trumps were fighting the case at all. At one point, she told a lawyer for the Trump children that they should just settle out of court and voluntarily agree to one of the sanctions: a demand by the Attorney General that they not serve on the boards of any nonprofits for one year. (The case will be tried in civil court, and the Trumps aren’t facing any criminal charges.) That’s far from the worst sort of punishment, but to accede to it would be a public embarrassment and an acknowledgement that the family did, indeed, use the foundation as something of a private slush fund to enrich themselves and reward their cronies. Judge Scarpulla made clear that she felt the children should agree to the sanction now, and that, if they don’t, she will probably impose a similar restriction “with or without your agreement.”

More... (https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-inconvenient-legal-troubles-that-lie-ahead-for-the-trump-foundation)

Don't give in, Mr. President! You need to beat this in court.

[Methais]

https://static.businessinsider.com/image/53b5de036bb3f7a727061221/image.gif

[ClydeR]

Seems like pretty tame stuff. Nobody would ever try to make a big deal about a charitable foundation.


ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Investigators in New York state issued a subpoena to Michael Cohen as part of their probe into the Trump Foundation, an official with Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration confirmed to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The subpoena was issued after Cohen’s attorney said his client has information of interest to both state and federal prosecutors. As Trump’s longtime lawyer and self-described “fixer,” Cohen could potentially be a significant source of information for state investigators looking into whether Trump or his charity broke state law or lied about their tax liability.

More... (https://apnews.com/72c5c19195f84abfaa42eaffe78d806a)

[time4fun]

Seems like pretty tame stuff. Nobody would ever try to make a big deal about a charitable foundation.

I literally laughed out loud.

It's kind of funny how all of those Hillary-hating Trump voters ended up voting for the guy who actually did all of the things they thought Clinton did.

[Wrathbringer]

I literally laughed out loud.

It's kind of funny how all of those Hillary-hating Trump voters ended up voting for the guy who actually did all of the things they thought Clinton did.

No one cares. #4moreyears

[cwolff]

I literally laughed out loud.

It's kind of funny how all of those Hillary-hating Trump voters ended up voting for the guy who actually did all of the things they thought Clinton did.

No kidding! Thank god they a conspiracy theory to counter all these various investigations and charges or their heads would explode.


The following video is an artistic depiction of what would happen if one day, en masse, they realize all at once that they've been played for suckers.



https://youtu.be/ZD24VY0YWdQ

[Androidpk]

Qanon says it all... -_-

[Methais]

No one cares. #4moreyears

This is correct.

[cwolff]

Qanon says it all... -_-

There was an article out yesterday highlighting some Reddit Qanon thread where the people were speculating why Cohen and Manafort were going down if they were actually working with trump to root out evil within the system or some such thing. It was good for a laugh.

Below is an article with an idea why we see corruption so differently from the trumplican.


Once you grasp that for Trump and many of his supporters, corruption means less the violation of law than the violation of established hierarchies, their behavior makes more sense. Since 2014, Trump has employed the phrase rule of law nine times in tweets. Seven of them refer to illegal immigration.

Why were Trump’s supporters so convinced that Clinton was the more corrupt candidate even as reporters uncovered far more damning evidence about Trump’s foundation than they did about Clinton’s? Likely because Clinton’s candidacy threatened traditional gender roles. For many Americans, female ambition—especially in service of a feminist agenda—in and of itself represents a form of corruption. “When female politicians were described as power-seeking,” noted the Yale researchers Victoria Brescoll and Tyler Okimoto in a 2010 study, “participants experienced feelings of moral outrage (i.e., contempt, anger, and/or disgust).”

Cohen’s admission makes it harder for Republicans to claim that Trump didn’t violate the law. But it doesn’t really matter. For many Republicans, Trump remains uncorrupt—indeed, anticorrupt—because what they fear most isn’t the corruption of American law; it’s the corruption of America’s traditional identity. And in the struggle against that form of corruption—the kind embodied by Cristhian Rivera—Trump isn’t the problem. He’s the solution.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/what-trumps-supporters-think-of-corruption/568147/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=the-atlantic-fb-test-312-4-&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social

[cwolff]

New York state has subpoenaed Michael Cohen in Trump Foundation probe
-Investigators in New York have subpoenaed President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as part of a probe of the Trump Foundation, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
-New York's Attorney General Barbara Underwood had filed suit against Trump and members of his family in June, alleging a pattern of "persistently illegal conduct" at the nonprofit foundation.
-Trump responded furiously on Twitter, vowing not to settle the case.

Interesting nexus here with Michael Cohen (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/22/new-york-investigators-have-issued-subpoena-to-former-trump-lawyer-cohen-as-part-of-trump-foundation-probe-ap-reports.html). Apparently the AG got Cohen's taxi buddy to flip which led to this suit and now she's subpoenaed Cohen and Cohen wants to talk.


“In light of the public disclosures made yesterday, we’ll be working with the New York State Attorney General and the Manhattan district attorney as appropriate,” Gazzale said. “We can’t comment further on this investigation.”
Shortly after the subpoena went out, Cohen personally contacted the tax department to talk, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-trump-cohen-cuomo-underwood-tax-subpoena-20180822-story.html