Aiming to combat the Washington Post’s recent report criticizing the source of money in Donald Trump’s charity and the guise under which the funds were then distributed, a spokeswoman for the GOP nominee said he has given “tens of millions of dollars.”
The Post claims in a followup report that campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks offered no further proof of Trump’s charity gifts aside from the fact that they came from the very organization that fell under scrutiny in the first place: the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
“Hicks also provided no information about how much — if any — of the donations she was describing had come from Trump’s own pocket,” said the Post writer David A. Fahrenthold.
The paper’s months-long investigation found that nearly all of Trump’s foundation money comes from donors other than the Republican presidential candidate himself.
Trump’s running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence, also defended Trump during an interview on CNN Monday, saying, “anyone who knows about Donald Trump and his career knows that this is a man who’s given away tens of millions of dollars to charitable causes throughout his business life.”
But, as the Post argued, Pence couldn’t provide sufficient evidence to back his claim. When CNN host Wolf Blitzer asked for proof, Pence cited only one thing: a $100,000 check Trump had written to a Louisiana church in August, to help with the cleanup after a devastating flood. That check did come from Trump’s own pocket, though Pence said he wasn’t sure if it had.
The paper’s probe into 17 years of tax filings and interviews with more than 200 people or groups listed as donors or beneficiaries has shown that Trump’s charity raises and spends money in unprecedented ways for a family foundation, according to experts cited in the investigative report.
The investigation showed that Trump has a history of turning other people’s gifts into his own charity. His last personal donation, according to tax records, was made in 2008.
The Post detailed several cases where Trump’s foundation came from givers other than himself, also uncovering that the foundation appeared to have defied tax laws.
For one, NBCUniversal gave $500,000 to the foundation in 2012. “Its gift more than covered the ‘personal’ donations that Trump offered at dramatic moments on ‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ — then paid for out of the Trump Foundation,” wrote Fahrenthold.
TheWrap reached out to Trump’s campaign for this story but have not yet heard back.