If it seems as if there are new questions surrounding the Donald J. Trump Foundation nearly every day, your perceptions aren’t far off. The Washington Post‘s David Fahrenthold has yet another scoop on the controversial charitable foundation.
Donald Trump’s charitable foundation — which has been sustained for years by donors outside the Trump family — has never obtained the certification that New York requires before charities can solicit money from the public, according to the state attorney general’s office.Under the laws in New York, where the Donald J. Trump Foundation is based, any charity that solicits more than $25,000 a year from the public must obtain a special kind of registration beforehand. Charities as large as Trump’s must also submit to a rigorous annual audit that asks — among other things — whether the charity spent any money for the personal benefit of its officers.
It’s unclear what kind of action New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) might take, if any, but the Post’s article added Schneiderman could go to court to “force Trump to return money that his foundation has already raised.”At this point, the number of allegations surrounding Trump’s foundation — the Pam Bondi donations, the portraits, the administrative missteps, the suspected illegalities and suspicions of a “slush fund,” etc. — are piling up in ways that, collectively, represent a fairly serious scandal.
Of course, there is some irony to the broader political context. For a while, the political world was convinced that it’s the Clinton Foundation that was the real political crisis — despite any evidence of actual wrongdoing. Many news organizations went digging into the Clinton charity, convinced there was dirt to be found, only to come up empty.And yet, there’s David Fahrenthold, uncovering one Trump Foundation controversy after another.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."