The Trump Foundation today agreed to shut down in scandal. CREW first brought attention to its illegal activities almost three years ago. Let's take a trip down memory lane 1/ washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
In March 2016, CREW discovered the Trump Foundation illegally gave a $25,000 political donation to support FL AG Pam Bondi while her office was reportedly investigating Trump University. It never brought a complaint. We did. 2/ citizensforethics.org/press-release/…
The next day, Trump representatives admit to the illegal donation, blaming an increasing series of unlikely clerical errors. 3/ citizensforethics.org/weve-got-quest…
We then filed an ethics complaint against Bondi for potentially violating the law by failing to investigate or take legal action regarding complaints against Trump University after the contribution from the Trump Foundation. 4/ citizensforethics.org/legal-filing/c…
We kept digging into the Foundation, and kept finding problems. We filed an IRS complaint against it for acting as a prop for the Trump campaign through its engagement in Trump Campaign events, including payments to groups that came to campaign rallies. 5/ citizensforethics.org/press-release/…
Following CREW’s discovery that the Trump Foundation did not file an updated 990 tax form, the Washington Post discovered a $2,500 IRS penalty paid by the Foundation for the illegal donation, kicking off one of the biggest stories of the year. 6/ washingtonpost.com/news/post-poli…
We then filed ANOTHER IRS complaint, this time into whether the donation was used to provide a private benefit to Trump and his business interests by attempting to discourage Bondi from investigating Trump U & for engaging in prohibited self-dealing 7/ citizensforethics.org/press-release/…
CREW filed criminal bribery complaints against Trump & Bondi with the Department of Justice and called for a criminal investigation into whether the Trump Foundation broke federal criminal law by making numerous false reports to the IRS on its tax forms 8/ citizensforethics.org/press-release/…
We then filed a Freedom of Information request with the New York Attorney General for Trump Foundation tax documents, as well as documents relating to the New York Attorney General’s investigation of the Trump Foundation. We'll come back to this one. 9/ citizensforethics.org/legal-filing/c…
CREW then filed its third IRS complaint against Donald Trump after it appears that he repeatedly broke the law by using the Trump Foundation for his personal benefit, calling for an investigation into multiple acts of self-dealing by Trump. 10/ citizensforethics.org/press-release/…
The AG responds to CREW’s request, and we discover that not only did the Foundation’s attempts to address its tax issues contain serious errors, they also presented materials to the AG that raise questions about the veracity of their previous claims 11/ citizensforethics.org/press-release/…
That brings us to today. The Trump Foundation is shutting down. It is good to see this illegality and abuse finally coming to an end. 12/12 citizensforethics.org/press-release/…
