Before You Give, Do Your Homework

Among the other potential impeachable offenses that are not being investigated at the moment, are the Trump foundation's rampant self dealing and corruption.

The foundation is being liquidated, and paying a $2,000,000.00 fine.

This raises a bigger point though, that there is little in the way of oversight or accountability for so called charitable foundations:

The New York State attorney general’s case against the Trump Foundation — Donald Trump’s nonprofit that a court shut down earlier this year — has concluded. The Trumps have agreed to pay a $2 million fine, the attorney general’s office said in a press release on Thursday.

The deal follows years of incredible, careful reporting by a number of reporters but most of all the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold. As Fahrenthold discovered, the Trump Foundation often operated as a slush fund for the Trump family and Trump’s businesses. It bought Trump an autographed Tim Tebow helmet, a portrait of himself, and money for various lawsuit settlements. Less entertainingly but perhaps more importantly, he also used a foundation fundraiser, which was nationally televised a few days before the Iowa caucuses, to promote his presidential bid in 2016.

Now, per the deal with the New York attorney general’s office:

The $1.78 million in assets currently being held by the Trump Foundation, along with the $2 million in damages to be paid by Mr. Trump, will be disbursed equally to eight charities: Army Emergency Relief, the Children’s Aid Society, Citymeals-on-Wheels, Give an Hour, Martha’s Table, United Negro College Fund, United Way of National Capital Area, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The charities — which were required as part of the resolution to be entities that did not have any relationship with Mr. Trump or entities he controlled — were approved by the Office of the Attorney General and the court.

It’s a fitting punishment: forcing a fake foundation that funneled money to bogus causes to actually use its money to benefit real charities. “My office will continue to fight for accountability because no one is above the law — not a businessman, not a candidate for office, and not even the president of the United States,” Attorney General Letitia James concluded in her statement.

It’s a nice sentiment, but it’s not true: Plenty of foundations are and remain above the law. The investigation into the Trump Foundation was unusual. There are some 86,000 foundations in the United States, with total assets of around $890 billion, and the vast majority of them never face this kind of scrutiny.

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The Trump case is egregious, but it didn’t merely happen because Trump is seemingly prone to playing fast and loose with tax law. It happened because there are tens of thousands of foundations in the US, and they operate with little or no regulatory oversight — from state attorneys general, from the IRS, from anyone.

This really is an area that needs a sh%$-load more oversight and requirements.