Fact check: Trump’s secretive, non-existent philanthropy

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.

From 2015: ‘The profits of my book?’ Trump said when a reporter asked about what he would do with the proceeds from his most recent book, ‘Crippled America.’ ‘I’m giving them away, to a lot of different — including the vets. ’Kay?’

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.

One of the clearest cases of Trump not making good on a promise to give to charity is Trump University, the real estate seminar business that has spawned lawsuits in New York and California alleging widespread fraud. Trump made at least $5 million from Trump University, according to the New York state attorney general. But Trump’s lawyers say that none of it went to charity because it was used for legal fees.

Unlike many other 2016 presidential candidates, Trump has not released his tax returns and claimed ‘there’s nothing to learn’ from them. But experts told us there’s plenty of information to glean from a candidate’s tax returns, including sources of income, effective tax rates, charitable giving habits, conflicts of interest and more. Every major party nominee since the late 1970s has released tax returns before Election Day.

STEPHANOPOULOS: “Let’s talk about your tax return. Under new pressure from the Clinton campaign, Secretary Clinton talking about that the last couple of days. I just have a bottom line question for you. Yes or no, do you believe voters have a right to see your tax returns before they make a final decision?” TRUMP: “I don’t think they do. But I do say this, I will really gladly give them — not going to learn anything but it’s under routine audit. When the audit ends I’ll present them.”

Third, the returns should confirm Trump’s assertion that he’s contributed $102 million to charitable causes over the years. In general, the fabulously wealthy reap big tax benefits from their giving. If Trump’s bracket is extremely low all that largesse might not be shrinking his tax bill at all. Such generosity, sans the carrot of significant deductions, would be highly unusual for someone of his self-described ‘massive wealth.’ It will be fun to hear The Donald’s explanation, especially when we have all the numbers before us.

Fiorina and others are referring only to the amount donated by the Clinton Foundation to outside charities, ignoring the fact that most of the Clinton Foundation’s charitable work is performed in-house. One independent philanthropy watchdog did an analysis of Clinton Foundation funding and concluded that about 89 percent of its funding went to charity. Simply put, despite its name, the Clinton Foundation is not a private foundation — which typically acts as a pass-through for private donations to other charitable organizations. Rather, it is a public charity. It conducts most of its charitable activities directly.

Last year, the same group gave the foundation an A+. President Daniel Borochoff said the slip resulted because the foundation spent 90 percent of its expenses on programs in 2012. He said that about 5 percent of the 600 charities his group rates get an A+; about 20 percent get an A.

Facing criticism from some quarters about her expensive speeches, Hillary Clinton said Friday that every dollar she’s earned speaking at universities since stepping down as secretary of state last year has gone into the philanthropic work of her family’s foundation. ‘All of the fees have been donated to the Clinton Foundation for it to continue its life-changing and life-saving work,’ she told ABC News. ‘So it goes from a foundation at a university to another foundation.’

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.

Since 2010, the Clinton Foundation has raised a total of $36 million for Haiti, including relief funds as well as projects focused on supporting Haiti’s small and medium businesses, improving livelihoods, enhancing education and exploring the nexus of agriculture, energy and environment. Today, the Clinton Foundation focuses on creating sustainable economic growth in the four priority sectors of energy, tourism, agriculture, and apparel/manufacturing. The Foundation also works to develop full-cycle investing, bringing together producers, investors, and markets in a way that is socially, environmentally and economically impactful.

The AIDS program that started with Mandela spread until it was reducing the cost of drugs to fight a number of deadly diseases in 70 countries. In that program, the Clinton Foundation convinced drug companies to lower their prices. Then it sent volunteers and staffers to help governments use them, distributing HIV tests, getting those with positive tests to hospitals, setting up pharmacies to handle the drugs.

As a result of our work, 9.9 million people in the developing world have access to low-cost, high-quality HIV and AIDS treatment.

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.

The foundation is not required to publicly release its donors. A foundation spokesman said that the organization continued to release donor information after Clinton left the State Department to be transparent. The foundation website indicated that 65,499 individuals or entities donated since 2004, though it does not include exact donation amounts; does not give dates beyond indicating who gave in 2014; and does not identify information about the donors such as addresses or employers.

Increase Donor Disclosure: The Foundation will increase the frequency of disclosure of its donors from annually to quarterly, publishing new contributors beginning in July 2015, and then each quarter thereafter (i.e., October, January, and April).

One night in January, Donald Trump skipped a GOP debate and instead held his own televised fundraiser for veterans. At the end of the night, Trump proclaimed it a huge success: ‘We just cracked $6 million, right? Six million.’ Now, Trump’s campaign says that number is incorrect.

Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, organized a nationally televised fundraiser for veterans’ causes in Des Moines on Jan. 28. That night, Trump said he had raised $6 million, including the gift from his own pocket. ‘Donald Trump gave $1 million,’ he said then. As recently as last week, Trump’s campaign manager had insisted that the mogul had already given that money away. But that was false: Trump had not.

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.