There is a lengthy piece written by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold which explains some of chicaneries that Donald J. Trump the presidential candidate has been doing in regards to Donald J. Trump the charity foundation.
The most significant thing that I gleaned from the story is how Donald J. Trump the presidential candidate is now being investigated by the New York Attorney General.
http://ift.tt/2dx3sC6
Journalist Says Trump Foundation May Have Engaged In 'Self-Dealing'
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Donald Trump has refused to release his income tax returns. This has left unanswered questions about his business practices and possible conflicts of interest between what's best for his international businesses and what's best for our country. My guest, Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, has found an alternate window into some of Trump's finances. Since January, Fahrenthold has been looking into Trump's charitable giving. His reporting has raised questions about ways in which the Trump Foundation may have violated the law.
He's found that Trump hasn't always followed through on donations he's committed to, and some charitable donations that Trump claims to have made from his own pocket actually came from money others donated to his foundation. Fahrenthold also discovered that Trump has sometimes requested that money owed to him be paid to the foundation, which may have enabled him to avoid paying taxes on that money. Fahrenthold has used crowdsourcing on Twitter to help him find information on whether Trump has fulfilled his financial promises to charities and how he's used his foundation's money. Fahrenthold's Twitter account was described as one of the most surprise sensations of the election year by CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter.
…
FAHRENTHOLD: Well, we learned a really interesting thing a couple of days ago, and that was - there was this mystery about the Donald J. Trump Foundation, Trump's nonprofit, which is that Trump hasn't actually given it any of his own money since 2008. Other people have supplied all the money in that time, which you don't normally see with a rich person's private charity. Those things are usually just filled up with a rich person's money. So we wondered, well, why does anybody give money to prop up Donald Trump's personal charity? And we learned an answer to that, which is that in - as you mentioned, in some cases, Trump has people who owe him money either for business dealings or they buy tickets that he has rights to. They pay the Trump Foundation and not Trump himself.
…
So if you have Trump avoiding income tax and money coming in and then he's still able to control it and use it as if it was his income to help his interests, then you're starting to see a bigger legal problem. We haven't proved all those pieces, but there are some indications that that might be a question that the IRS or the New York State attorney general might want to ask.
GROSS: Are either of those places investigating?
FAHRENTHOLD: The New York attorney general is. Eric Schneiderman is a Democrat, launched an investigation of the Trump Foundation a couple of weeks ago. The IRS has not commented about whether it's investigating or not.
…
GROSS: So to sum up, there are at least two tax laws that you think the Trump Foundation might be violating. Sum up again what they are.
FAHRENTHOLD: Well, there's actually more than two. But I'll give you the ones that I think he may have violated. There's the one that prohibits self-dealing. It's - people who run charities from taking the charity's money and spending it to buy things for themselves or to help their own businesses. There's a question about whether he violated the rule about paying income tax on money - and when you assign your own income to a charity. But there's other things like filing a false return. He's filed a number of incorrect tax filings for the Trump Foundation and also paying a prohibited political gift. That's the one that he's admitted so far.
…
Now, you can't do that. Nonprofits like the Trump Foundation are prohibited from giving political gifts, but he did. And even more interesting, he filed - the next year, when the Trump Foundation filed its tax paperwork with the IRS, it did something very odd, which is that it omitted any mention that it had given this prohibited political gift to Pam Bondi's group. The group in Florida that she supported - was supporting her was called And Justice for All, OK? That's important to remember that name.
…
The most significant thing that I gleaned from the story is how Donald J. Trump the presidential candidate is now being investigated by the New York Attorney General.
http://ift.tt/2dx3sC6
Journalist Says Trump Foundation May Have Engaged In 'Self-Dealing'
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Donald Trump has refused to release his income tax returns. This has left unanswered questions about his business practices and possible conflicts of interest between what's best for his international businesses and what's best for our country. My guest, Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, has found an alternate window into some of Trump's finances. Since January, Fahrenthold has been looking into Trump's charitable giving. His reporting has raised questions about ways in which the Trump Foundation may have violated the law.
He's found that Trump hasn't always followed through on donations he's committed to, and some charitable donations that Trump claims to have made from his own pocket actually came from money others donated to his foundation. Fahrenthold also discovered that Trump has sometimes requested that money owed to him be paid to the foundation, which may have enabled him to avoid paying taxes on that money. Fahrenthold has used crowdsourcing on Twitter to help him find information on whether Trump has fulfilled his financial promises to charities and how he's used his foundation's money. Fahrenthold's Twitter account was described as one of the most surprise sensations of the election year by CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter.
…
FAHRENTHOLD: Well, we learned a really interesting thing a couple of days ago, and that was - there was this mystery about the Donald J. Trump Foundation, Trump's nonprofit, which is that Trump hasn't actually given it any of his own money since 2008. Other people have supplied all the money in that time, which you don't normally see with a rich person's private charity. Those things are usually just filled up with a rich person's money. So we wondered, well, why does anybody give money to prop up Donald Trump's personal charity? And we learned an answer to that, which is that in - as you mentioned, in some cases, Trump has people who owe him money either for business dealings or they buy tickets that he has rights to. They pay the Trump Foundation and not Trump himself.
…
So if you have Trump avoiding income tax and money coming in and then he's still able to control it and use it as if it was his income to help his interests, then you're starting to see a bigger legal problem. We haven't proved all those pieces, but there are some indications that that might be a question that the IRS or the New York State attorney general might want to ask.
GROSS: Are either of those places investigating?
FAHRENTHOLD: The New York attorney general is. Eric Schneiderman is a Democrat, launched an investigation of the Trump Foundation a couple of weeks ago. The IRS has not commented about whether it's investigating or not.
…
GROSS: So to sum up, there are at least two tax laws that you think the Trump Foundation might be violating. Sum up again what they are.
FAHRENTHOLD: Well, there's actually more than two. But I'll give you the ones that I think he may have violated. There's the one that prohibits self-dealing. It's - people who run charities from taking the charity's money and spending it to buy things for themselves or to help their own businesses. There's a question about whether he violated the rule about paying income tax on money - and when you assign your own income to a charity. But there's other things like filing a false return. He's filed a number of incorrect tax filings for the Trump Foundation and also paying a prohibited political gift. That's the one that he's admitted so far.
…
Now, you can't do that. Nonprofits like the Trump Foundation are prohibited from giving political gifts, but he did. And even more interesting, he filed - the next year, when the Trump Foundation filed its tax paperwork with the IRS, it did something very odd, which is that it omitted any mention that it had given this prohibited political gift to Pam Bondi's group. The group in Florida that she supported - was supporting her was called And Justice for All, OK? That's important to remember that name.
…
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2d8j4d0
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire