Huge New Report Claims Trump Embezzled Funds From Kids’ Cancer Charity

An explosive new report by Forbes Magazine claims the Trump Organisation has been funnelling money from funds donated to a children’s charity, just in case Donald Trump wasn’t already enough of a cartoon villain.

It claims that funds raised by the Eric Trump Foundation‘s annual charity golf event – for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – have been used to channel money into the Trump Organisation by hosting said events at a Trump-owned golf course, the Trump National Golf Club in New York state.

Basically, Eric Trump has spent years claiming that the benefit of hosting the charity events at his family’s golf course is that “we get to use our assets 100% free of charge”, allowing more money to go to charity.
The Forbes investigation smashes that claim wide open. When the charity events first began in 2007, the Eric Trump Foundation incurred costs of around $50k (AU $66k) per event, which is reportedly in line with what other charities pay to host events at Trump courses. It’s not “100% free of charge”, but it’s not out-of-order, either.
But in 2011, Trump looked at the books and flipped his shit, according to a former senior employee of the golf course.

“Mr Trump had a cow,” said Ian Gillule, who left the golf course in 2015. “He flipped. He was like, ‘We’re donating all of this stuff, and there’s no paper trail? No credit?’ And he went nuts. He said, ‘I don’t care if it’s my son or not – everybody gets billed.”

So that year, the foundation’s costs for the charity event tripled on the previous year to $142k (AU $188k). Overall, it’s received $1.2 million (AU $1.59 million) for its usage. That figure defies “any reasonable cost justification for a one-day golf tournament” say golf charity experts, who are apparently a real thing.

The report notes the Eric Trump Foundation has raised a helluva lot of money for sick kids – $11 million (AU $14.6 million), in fact.
But it’s also acted as “like an arm of an overall business”, funding the settlement of Trump business lawsuit, making political donations, and purchasing expensive portraits, all with money donated for charity. 

Since the report came out, Eric Trump’s only public statement has been to hawk his own – demonstrably good – achievements of raising significant funds for sick kids.

However, he hasn’t denied that vast sums of money have been funnelled into the Trump Organisation. 


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Read the full Forbes report here.;>

Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty.
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