CTR statement on Trump’s Austin, Texas rally

On numerous occasions this year, Trump’s campaign work and his foundation work have overlapped—putting himself at risk for penalties and his charity at risk of being shut down…In key early primary states this year, Trump handed out Foundation checks to charities at campaign rallies. This also calls into question ‘whether the foundation provided the campaign with an illegal in-kind contribution by providing services for what was a campaign event. Under the campaign finance laws… providing anything of value to a campaign for free or at less than fair market value is a contribution to the campaign,’ said Larry Noble, the general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center.

On Jan. 30, with Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. by his side at a campaign rally in Davenport, Iowa, Trump presented a $100,000 Trump Foundation check to Puppy Jake, a charity which supports veterans by providing service dogs. Puppy Jake’s executive director, Becky Beach, told The Daily Beast that the Trump campaign had been in touch with her about the Trump Foundation’s contribution…The next day, the day before the Iowa caucuses, the founder of Support Siouxland Soldiers, another vets charity, appeared on stage with Trump at a Sioux City campaign rally to accept a $100,000 Trump Foundation check. Support Siouxland Soldiers executive director Sarah Petersen told The Daily Beast that she had been in touch with a Trump staffer named Hope, and provided the phone number they used in order to discuss the donation. The phone number matches up with the campaign’s listed number for Hope Hicks, the Trump campaign’s spokeswoman.

Both the contribution to Bondi and the overlap between the Trump campaign and his charity should be publicly examined, government watchdogs said. ‘This should be investigated. There are troubling legal issues posed in both circumstances,’ said Richard Skinner, a money-in-politics policy analyst at the Sunlight Foundation. ‘There is definitely [use of] a charitable foundation in an inappropriate way.’

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.

In recent weeks, The Post tried to answer the question by digging up records going back to the late 1980s and canvassing a wide swath of nonprofits with some connection to Trump.  That research showed that Trump has a long-standing habit of promising to give to charity. But Trump’s follow-through on those promises was middling — even at the beginning, in his early days as a national celebrity.

By the early 2000s, Trump had recovered from his financial troubles, returning to the public eye as a different kind of mogul. More than ever, Trump himself was the product: He was selling his name on products from TV shows to steaks to high-rise condominiums around the country.  Again, Trump needed an explanation for why he needed the money.  ‘You’re getting paid over a million for your show,’ radio host Howard Stern said to Trump in 2004, when Trump was first hosting ‘The Apprentice.’  ‘Oh, a lot more than that,’ Trump said.  ‘You’re getting paid over two-and-a-half-million dollars!’ Stern said.  ‘Yeah, I don’t do it for that,’ Trump said. ‘I’m giving the money to charity.’ He named AIDS research and the Police Athletic League. That year, Trump’s foundation appears to have given $1,000 to AIDS research and $106,000 to the Police Athletic League.

Promoting Trump Vodka in 2006, Trump told Larry King, ‘I’m giving the money to charity.’ But the only apparent donation related to Trump Vodka is a ‘few hundred dollars’ given to a group supporting Walter Reed Hospital in connection with a specific promotion, as reported by CNN last month.

Since the first day of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has said that he gave more than $102 million to charity in the past five years. To back up that claim, Trump’s campaign compiled a list of his contributions — 4,844 of them, filling 93 pages. But, in that massive list, one thing was missing. Not a single one of those donations was actually a personal gift of Trump’s own money. Instead, according to a Washington Post analysis, many of the gifts that Trump cited to prove his generosity were free rounds of golf, given away by his courses for charity auctions and raffles.

MS TRUDEAU: The State Department is not aware of any actions that were influenced by the Clinton Foundation. QUESTION: Any action at all over the course of Secretary Clinton’s tenure? MS TRUDEAU: Correct.

The State Department said Monday it has no evidence that any actions taken by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was secretary of state were influenced by donations to the Clinton Foundation or former President Bill Clinton’s speaking fees. Spokesman Jeff Rathke said the department received requests to review potential conflicts primarily for proposed speech hosts or consulting deals for Bill Clinton and found no conflicts.

Groups included on the CharityWatch Top-Rated list generally spend 75% or more of their budgets on programs [The Clinton Foundation is at 88%], spend $25 or less to raise $100 in public support [the Foundation spends $2 for every $100 raised], do not hold excessive assets in reserve, have met CharityWatch’s governance benchmarks, and receive “open-book” status for disclosure of basic financial information and documents to CharityWatch.

The Healthy Schools Program supports more than 18 million students by improving physical education, health education, child nutrition, and staff wellness policies and programs in more than 31,000 schools. The Healthy Schools Program receives the majority of its funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support schools in states with the highest rates of obesity.

From 2002 to 2010, as an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, 4 million patients were able to access CHAI-negotiated ARV drugs and as of today, CHAI’s work, as a separate 501(c)(3), has over 11.5 million patients accessing treatment.

To date, members of the CGI community have made nearly 3,200 commitments which have improved the lives of over 430 million people in more than 180 countries.

In late 2008, after Obama nominated Clinton to be secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation agreed to voluntarily disclose names and donation ranges of its contributors.

FBI officials wanted to investigate whether there was a criminal conflict of interest with the State Department and the Clinton Foundation during Clinton’s tenure. The Department of Justice had looked into allegations surrounding the foundation a year earlier after the release of the controversial book ‘Clinton Cash,’ but found them to be unsubstantiated and there was insufficient evidence to open a case.

As a result, DOJ officials pushed back against opening a case during the meeting earlier this year. Some also expressed concern the request seemed more political than substantive, especially given the timing of it coinciding with the investigation into the private email server and Clinton’s presidential campaign.