Eric Trump Charity Spent $880K at Family-Owned Golf Resorts
Worth a repost in light of Ivanka's fundraiser "coffee" auction to benefit this "charity"
In promotional videos and press releases, ETF touts a 95 to 100 percent donation ratio and implies that by benefit of being a Trump, namesake properties are handed over for charity events at little or no cost. But according to a Daily Beast analysis of annual IRS reports and New York state financial disclosures from the charity’s inception in 2007 to 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, ETF spent $881,779 on its annual Golf Invitational at Trump-owned clubs, a portion of which—$100,000 in 2013 and $88,000 in 2014—was reported as paid directly “to a company of a family member of the Board of Directors.” In other words, Donald Trump himself.
“There’s nothing necessarily wrong with contracting with businesses you own,” said Philip Hackney, an associate professor of law at Louisiana State University’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center, and a former employee in the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit.
It becomes problematic, Hackney said, when a charity claims to send 100 percent of donations to an intended beneficiary, but routes some of that money through their own business without fully disclosing that fact to donors.
“There’s a question—maybe not of the legality, but of the ethics of it,” he said.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/30/eric-trump-charity-spent-880k-at-family-owned-golf-resorts.html
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