A report by Forbes led the New York attorney general to investigate the Eric Trump Foundation for violating state laws. The Donald J. Trump Foundation donated $100,000 to the Eric Trump Foundation which, in turn, used the amount to pay a golf course owned by the real estate billionaire.
The $100,000 offset costs for the fundraiser, Ian Gillule, an ex-worker at the Trump National Westchester, said. Forbes noted that leaders of private foundations are banned from using charity money to benefit their business.
Like father, like son
Until the Forbes report was published, it was only the Donald J.
Trump Foundation that the New York AG has been investigating for months. With the report, the two are now under investigation. Marcus Owens, head of the nonprofit division of the IRS, explained that the interaction between the two foundations is a novel aspect of the situation.
Owens said that it is not often that a father and son set of foundations are under investigation by the same AG for misusing assets and interacting with each other in ways which cause the use of assets for non-charitable purposes. The Eric Trump Foundation has been hosting charity golf tournaments over the past 10 years to raise money for child cancer research at the St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital.
A part of the donations, $100,000 was paid to Trump’s golf course which hosted the charity golf tournament to pay for expenses, The New York Daily News reported.
In the last decade, the foundation raised more than $16.3 million for the hospital.
Donald Trump Insists
It was Donald Trump who insisted that the golf course be paid for its use in the charity event, two former board members of the Eric Trump Foundation said. Eric Trump, however, reportedly advertises that the golf course is free when holding the event which is charity fraud, Harvey Dale, professor of philanthropy and law at New York University, said.
There is also the issue of misrepresentation, Sean Delaney, a former assistant AG in New York, said if funds that are supposed to benefit a particular charity go to other charities. He explained that donors might donate to a specific charity such as St. Jude because they care about children’s cancer or supporting that particular hospital, not the other charities.
Although a spokesman for Eric Trump said the foundation would cooperate with the AG review, investigations like the one initiated by the city the younger Trump will consider a criticism of his father. Eric has considered critics of his father as some kind of subhumans, Mashable reported.
