Donald Trump has used donations from other organizations to his charitable Trump Foundation to pass the money on as his own — in fact, Trump might have made money on the exchange — according to a Washington Post report.
The paper reported the Trump Foundation solicited $150,000 in donations from New Jersey’s Charles Evan Foundation in 2009 and ’10 and passed that amount in those years on to the Palm Beach Police Foundation.
"His support did not include any of his own money," The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold wrote. "Instead, Trump had found a way to give away somebody else’s money and claim the credit for himself."
The report added, citing the police foundation’s tax records, Trump charged the Palm Beach police $267,463 to rent a room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach to host a 2014 event in which the real estate billionaire was awarded the Palm Tree Award for philanthropy.
"The Donald J. Trump Foundation is not like other charities," Fahrenthold wrote in his report. "An investigation of the foundation — including examinations of 17 years of tax filings and interviews with more than 200 individuals or groups listed as donors or beneficiaries — found that it collects and spends money in a very unusual manner.
"For one thing, nearly all of its money comes from people other than Trump. In tax records, the last gift from Trump was in 2008. Since then, all of the donations have been other people’s money — an arrangement that experts say is almost unheard of for a family foundation.
"Trump then takes that money and generally does with it as he pleases. In many cases, he passes it on to other charities, which often are under the impression that it is Trump’s own money."