Donald Trump And Family Literally Profiting Off Kids With Cancer
Trump charged children’s cancer charity for using his golf course for fundraisers.
The Trump family has profited off of charity fundraisers meant for children with cancer, a new report confirms.
According to a report in Forbes, Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump has bragged for years about how his charity is able to use Trump golf courses free of cost for fundraising events for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
However, it turns out the Trumps have not been donating their facilities free of charge. In fact, the Trump Organization has charged “more than $1.2 million” for use of its golf courses and other facilities to children’s cancer fundraising efforts over the years.
The report by Forbes also notes that donors to Eric Trump’s foundation were led to believe that their donations were going to help sick children, but more than $500,000 in donations were simply re-donated to other organizations.
And Forbes also reports, “The Donald J. Trump Foundation, which has come under previous scrutiny for self-dealing and advancing the interests of its namesake rather than those of charity, apparently used the Eric Trump Foundation to funnel $100,000 in donations into revenue for the Trump Organization.”
And according to the report, Donald Trump was the one who ordered his company to charge for the children’s cancer fundraisers.
“All of this seems to defy federal tax rules and state laws that ban self-dealing and misleading donors. It also raises larger questions about the Trump family dynamics and whether Eric and his brother, Don Jr., can be truly independent of their father,” the Forbes report notes.
For the first several years, the cost of Eric Trump’s fundraisers were about $46,000. However, in 2011, the expenses more than tripled from $46,000 to $142,000 according to IRS filings.
That all ended when Donald Trump found out he was not being paid.
Forbes quotes a person worked in the Trump organization saying, “In the early years, they weren’t being billed [for the club]–the bills would just disappear.”
But when Donald Trump found out the fundraisers were not paying him for using his golf course he was pissed.
“Mr. Trump had a cow. He flipped. He was like, ‘We’re donating all of this stuff, and there’s no paper trail? No credit?’ And he went nuts. He said, ‘I don’t care if it’s my son or not–everybody gets billed.'”
Forbes notes, “The Donald J. Trump Foundation famously acted like an arm of the overall business, using the charity’s money to settle a Trump business lawsuit, make a political donation and even purchase expensive portraits of its namesake. Meanwhile, Trump businesses billed the Trump campaign, fueled by small outside donors, more than $11 million to use his properties, chefs and private aircraft.”
You can read the full report here.
