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Busted: IRS Fines Trump For $25K Bribe To Florida Attorney General To End Trump U Investigation

Busted: IRS Fines Trump For $25K Bribe To Florida Attorney General To End Trump U Investigation

The IRS has stepped in and penalized Donald Trump’s foundation for making an illegal campaign contribution political bribe to Pam Bondi, Florida’s Republican Attorney General who participated in a pay-for-play deal to drop the criminal investigation against Trump University.

As the Washington Post reports, Trump blamed incompetence for the complicated circumstances of the illegal donation, which seemed to be intentionally hidden in plain sight:

Donald Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty this year, an official at Trump’s company said, afterit was revealed that Trump’s charitable foundation had violated tax laws by giving a political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida’s attorney general. The improper donation, a $25,000 gift from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, was made in 2013. The foundation told the IRS that it had given $25,000 to a third group, a charity in Kansas with a similar name, “Justice for All.” In fact, the Trump Foundation had not actually sent the Kansas group any money. This new, incorrect listing had the effect of camouflaging the prohibited gi`ft. Trump’s CFO said that the listing of the Kansas group was another mistake, made by the foundation’s accountants.
An excerpt from the 2013 tax filings of the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The $25,000 gift to “Justice for All” did not exist. It took the place of a real $25,000 gift that had violated IRS rules, because it went to a campaign group in Florida. The name of the group that got the prohibited gift: “And Justice for All.” The Post asked McConney, the Trump Organization controller, for a copy of the IRS form that Trump had filed along with his $2,500 penalty tax. McConney said he would check to see if it could be released.

Ironically, Trump keeps twisting the truth about Hillary Clinton’s transparent release of tax returns for the last 30 years, and the release of the Clinton Foundation tax returns, which triggered precisely zero similar penalties.

Of course, Hillary Clinton isn’t facing any charges of any sort even near the kind that Donald Trump is facing the Trump University racketeering trial that’s set for November 28th after his legal “Hail Mary” failed last month.

It won’t be the first time even this week that Donald Trump is accused blatantly of projecting his own problems onto Hillary Clinton – one of the most obvious political ploys in the book. But he’s now become a master projector, even having the nerve to claim that Democrats are bigots while he demonizes minorities and discussing crime (clearly insinuating that the perpetrators are minorities) as if America is crumbling, rather than at 40-year lows for violent crime.

However, Donald Trump knows about crime first hand, and this IRS fine is just the tiny tip of a looming iceberg of punitive fines for his inglorious Trump University con-game.

Grant Stern
is the Executive Editor of Occupy Democrats and published author. His new Meet the Candidates 2020 book series is distributed by Simon and Schuster. He's also mortgage broker, community activist and radio personality in Miami, Florida., as well as the producer of the Dworkin Report podcast. Grant is also an occasional contributor to Raw Story, Alternet, and the DC Report, and an unpaid senior advisor to the Democratic Coalition and a Director of Sunshine Agenda Inc. a government transparency nonprofit organization. Get all of his stories sent directly to your inbox here:

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