CTR founder David Brock calls on Donald Trump to immediately shut down the Trump Foundation

And in 2013, the Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to a political organization supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi—an action the foundation is prohibited from taking, and which it failed to report on its disclosures. The Trump campaign blamed this failure on clerical mistakes, but legal experts are sounding the alarm because at the time Bondi was reviewing complaints surrounding the businessman’s controversial Trump University project.

Donald Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty this year, an official at Trump’s company said, after it was revealed that Trump’s charitable foundation had violated tax laws by giving a political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida’s attorney general. The improper donation, a $25,000 gift from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, was made in 2013. At the time, Attorney General Pam Bondi was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. She decided not to pursue the case.

Donald Trump’s charitable foundation gave $100,000 in 2014 to a conservative activist group that was used to help finance a federal lawsuit against New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — the same public official who was suing the real estate mogul for fraud over the operations of Trump University. The size and timing of the donation to the Citizens United Foundation, an arm of the sprawling conservative network run by David Bossie, who is now Trump’s deputy campaign manager, could raise fresh questions about whether Trump has used his tax-exempt charity to further political and personal causes… A review of tax returns filed by the Trump Foundation shows that the 2014 donation to Bossie’s Citizens United Foundation was by far the largest it gave to any organization that year, substantially exceeding its contributions to more traditional charities.

But the story of his charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, illustrates a different side of Trump. Donors give money to the foundation; the billionaire scratches their backs and uses their money to burnish his ego and, more recently, his political reputation.  Initially, the charitable foundation gave mostly to nonpolitical causes. But since 2010, when Trump began considering a run for president as a Republican, his foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative political groups, including the Citizens United Foundation, the Iowa-based Family Leader Foundation and Liberty Central, the advocacy group led by Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

In many cases, the Trump foundation’s donations appear to have been spurred by one-off encounters in Trump’s own life. For instance, the fifth-biggest donation in the Trump Foundation’s recent history — $158,000, in 2012 — seems to have been used to settle a lawsuit against one of Trump’s golf courses. A man named Martin Greenberg had sued, claiming a mistake at the course cost him a huge hole-in-one prize. On the day the parties told a court their suit was settled, Trump’s Foundation sent Greenberg’s foundation a check.

Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents. Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against ‘self-dealing’ — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.

In another instance, from 2013, the Trump Foundation made a $5,000 donation to the D.C. Preservation League, according to the group and tax filings. That nonprofit’s support has been helpful for Trump as he has turned the historic Old Post Office Pavilion on Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue NW into a luxury hotel. The Trump Foundation’s donation to that group bought a ‘sponsorship,’ which included advertising space in the programs for three big events that drew Washington’s real estate elite. The ads did not mention the foundation or anything related to charity. Instead, they promoted Trump’s hotels, with glamorous photos and a phone number to call to make a reservation. ‘The foundation wrote a check that essentially bought advertising for Trump hotels?’ asked John Edie, the longtime general counsel for the Council on Foundations, when a Post reporter described this arrangement. ‘That’s not charity.’

In two cases, he has used money from his charity to buy himself a gift. In one of those cases — not previously reported — Trump spent $20,000 of money earmarked for charitable purposes to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself.

The last of the four newly documented expenditures involves the second painting of Trump, which he bought with charity money. It happened in 2014, during a gala at Mar-a-Lago that raised money for Unicorn Children’s Foundation — a Florida charity that helps children with developmental and learning disorders. The gala’s main event was a concert by Jon Secada. But there was also an auction of paintings by Havi Schanz, a Miami Beach-based artist. One was of Marilyn Monroe. The other was a four foot-tall portrait of Trump: a younger-looking, mid-’90s Trump, painted in acrylic on top of an old architectural drawing. Trump bought it for $10,000…A few days later, the charity said, a check came from the Trump Foundation. Trump himself gave nothing, according to Sharon Alexander, the executive director of the charity.

Did Donald Trump violate IRS rules, by using a charity’s money to buy himself a signed football helmet? Four years ago, at a charity fundraiser in Palm Beach, Donald Trump got into a bidding war at the evening’s live auction. The items up for sale: A Denver Broncos helmet, autographed by then-star quarterback Tim Tebow, and a Tebow jersey. Trump won, eventually, with a bid of $12,000. Afterward, he posed with the helmet. His purchase made gossip-column news: a flourish of generosity, by a mogul with money to burn. ‘The Donald giveth, and The Donald payeth,’ wrote the Palm Beach Daily News. ‘Blessed be the name of The Donald.’ But Trump didn’t actually pay with his own money. Instead, the Susan G. Komen organization — the breast-cancer nonprofit that hosted the party — got a $12,000 payment from another nonprofit, the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

At a glittering 2008 gala hosted by Gucci to benefit Madonna’s charity, Donald Trump bid more than $100,000 for a trip to Paris, earning him press from New York to London. But most of the money he used wasn’t his. It came from his foundation, to which he had donated just $30,000 that year…With Trump’s winning bid on the vacation, most of the money almost certainly did not come from Trump himself. Tax records from his foundation show that in the preceding years, the foundation had spent virtually all of its money each year. Then in, 2008 — the year Trump won the vacation — he donated $30,000 to his foundation. (The year before, Trump also donated just $30,000.) The largest donor in 2008 was the Willard T.C. Johnson Foundation, which gave $250,000 to the Trump Foundation.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation is not like other charities. An investigation of the foundation — including examinations of 17 years of tax filings and interviews with more than 200 individuals or groups listed as donors or beneficiaries — found that it collects and spends money in a very unusual manner. For one thing, nearly all of its money comes from people other than Trump. In tax records, the last gift from Trump was in 2008. Since then, all of the donations have been other people’s money — an arrangement that experts say is almost unheard of for a family foundation.

In the 15 years prior to the veterans donation, Trump promised to donate earnings from a wide variety of his moneymaking enterprises: ‘The Apprentice.’ Trump Vodka. Trump University. A book. Another book. If he had honored all those pledges, Trump’s gifts to charity would have topped $8.5 million. But in the 15 years prior to the veterans’ gift, public records show that Trump donated about $2.8 million through a foundation set up to give his money away — less than a third of the pledged amount — and nothing since 2009. Records show Trump has given nothing to his foundation since 2008.