2016 POTUS Election Thread

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townsend

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Trump used $258,000 from his charity to settle legal problems
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-used-258000-from-his-charity-to-settle-legal-problems/2016/09/20/adc88f9c-7d11-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html?postshare=2341474381688708&tid=ss_tw

By David A. Fahrenthold PoliticsSeptember 20 at 10:26 AM
Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.

Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.

In one case, from 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Fla., resulting from a dispute over the size of a flagpole.

In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines — if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded almost entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.


The check to charity from the Trump Foundation.
In another case, court papers say one of Trump’s golf courses in New York agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff’s chosen charity. A $158,000 donation was made by the Trump Foundation, according to tax records.

The other expenditures involved smaller amounts. In 2013, Trump used $5,000 from the foundation to buy advertisements touting his chain of hotels in programs for three events organized by a D.C. preservation group. And in 2014, Trump spent $10,000 of the foundation’s money for a portrait of himself bought at a charity fundraiser.


Or, rather, another portrait of himself.

Several years earlier, Trump had used $20,000 from the Trump Foundation to buy a different, six foot-tall portrait.

If the Internal Revenue Service were to find that Trump violated self-dealing rules, the agency could require him to pay penalty taxes or to reimburse the foundation for all the money it spent on his behalf. Trump is also facing scrutiny from the office of the New York attorney general, which is examining whether the foundation broke state charity laws.

More broadly, these cases also provide new evidence that Trump ran his charity in a way that may have violated U.S. tax law and gone against the moral conventions of philanthropy.

“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington. After The Post described the details of these Trump Foundation gifts, Tenenbaum described them as “really shocking.”

“If he’s using other people’s money — run through his foundation — to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I’ve seen in a while,” Tenenbaum said.

The Post sent the Trump campaign a detailed list of questions about the four cases, but received no response.

The New York attorney general’s office declined to comment when asked whether its inquiry would cover these new cases of possible self-dealing.

What we know about Trump's charitable giving Play Video1:24

Reporter David Fahrenthold is investigating how much presidential candidate Donald Trump has given to charity over the past seven years. Here's what he found. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
Trump founded his charity in 1987 and, for years, was its only donor. But in 2006, Trump gave away almost all of the money he had donated to the foundation, leaving it with just $4,238 at year’s end, according to tax records.

Then, he transformed the Trump Foundation into something rarely seen in the world of philanthropy: a name-branded foundation, whose namesake provides none of its money. Trump gave relatively small donations in 2007 and 2008, and afterward: nothing. The foundation’s tax records show no donations from Trump since 2009.


[In 2007, Trump had to face his own falsehoods. And he did, 30 times.]

Its money has come from other donors, most notably pro-wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon, who gave a total of $5 million from 2007 to 2009, tax records show. Trump remains the foundation’s president, and he told the IRS in his latest public filings that he works half an hour per week on the charity.

The Post has previously detailed other cases in which Trump used the charity’s money in a way that appeared to violate the law.

In 2013, for instance, the foundation gave $25,000 to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R). That gift was made around the same time that Bondi’s office was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. It didn’t.

Tax laws say nonprofits such as the Trump Foundation may not make political gifts. Trump staffers blamed the gift on a clerical error. After The Post reported on the gift to Bondi’s group this spring, Trump paid a $2,500 penalty tax and reimbursed the Trump Foundation for the $25,000 donation.

In other instances, it appeared that Trump may have violated rules against self-dealing.

In 2012, for instance, Trump spent $12,000 of the foundation’s money to buy a football helmet signed by NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.

And in 2007, Trump’s wife, Melania, bid $20,000 for the six-foot-tall portrait of Trump, done by a “speed painter” during a charity gala at Mar-a-Lago. Later, Trump paid for the painting with $20,000 from the foundation.


In those cases, tax experts said, Trump was not allowed to simply keep these items and display them in a home or business. They had to be put to a charitable use.

Trump’s campaign has not responded to questions about what became of the helmet or the portrait.


After the settlement, Trump put a slightly smaller flag farther from the road and mounted it on a 70-foot pole as pictured in this Nov. 1, 2015 photo. (Rosalind Helderman/The Washington Post)
The four new cases of possible self-dealing were discovered in the Trump Foundation’s tax filings. While Trump has refused to release his personal tax returns, the foundation’s filings are required to be public.

The case involving the flagpole at Trump’s oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club began in 2006, when the club put up a giant American flag on the 80-foot pole. Town rules said flagpoles should be 42 feet high at most. Trump’s contention, according to news reports, was: “You don’t need a permit to put up the American flag.”

The town began to fine Trump, $1,250 a day.

Trump’s club sued in federal court, saying that a smaller flag “would fail to appropriately express the magnitude of Donald J. Trump’s . . . patriotism.”


They settled.

The town waived the $120,000 in fines. In September 2007, Trump wrote the town a letter, saying he had done his part as well.

“I have sent a check for $100,000 to Fisher House,” he wrote. The town had chosen Fisher House, which runs a network of comfort homes for the families of veterans and military personnel receiving medical treatment, as the recipient of the money. Trump added that, for good measure, “I have sent a check for $25,000” to another charity, the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial.

Trump provided the town with copies of the checks, which show that they came from the Trump Foundation.

In the town of Palm Beach, nobody seems to have objected that the fines assessed on Trump’s business were being erased by a donation from a charity.

“I don’t know that there was any attention paid to that at the time. We just saw two checks signed by Donald J. Trump,” said John Randolph, the Palm Beach town attorney. “I’m sure we were satisfied with it.”


Excerpt from a settlement filed in federal court in 2007.
In the other case in which a Trump Foundation payment seemed to help settle a legal dispute, the trouble began with a hole-in-one.

In 2010, a man named Martin Greenberg hit a hole-in-one on the 13th hole while playing in a charity tournament at Trump’s course in Westchester County, N.Y.

Greenberg won a $1 million prize. Briefly.

Later, Greenberg was told that he had won nothing. The prize’s rules required that the shot had to go 150 yards. But Trump’s course had allegedly made the hole too short.

Greenberg sued.

Eventually, court papers show, Trump’s golf course signed off on a settlement that required it to make a donation of Martin Greenberg’s choosing. Then, on the day that the parties informed the court they had settled their case, a $158,000 donation was sent to the Martin Greenberg Foundation.

That money came from the Trump Foundation, according to the tax filings of both Trump’s and Greenberg’s foundations.

Greenberg’s foundation reported getting nothing that year from Trump personally or from his golf club.

Both Greenberg and Trump have declined to comment.

Several tax experts said that the two cases appeared to be clear cases of self-dealing, as defined by the tax code.

The Trump Foundation had made a donation, it seemed, so that a Trump business did not have to.

Rosemary E. Fei, a lawyer in San Francisco who advises nonprofits, said both cases clearly fit the definition of self-dealing.

“Yes, Trump pledged as part of the settlement to make a payment to a charity, and yes, the foundation is writing a check to a charity,” Fei said. “But the obligation was Trump’s. And you can’t have charitable foundation paying off Trump’s personal obligations. That would be classic self-dealing.”


The Trump International Hotel on Sept. 15. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
In another instance, from 2013, the Trump Foundation made a $5,000 donation to the D.C. Preservation League, according to the group and tax filings. That nonprofit’s support has been helpful for Trump as he has turned the historic Old Post Office Pavilion on Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue NW into a luxury hotel.

The Trump Foundation’s donation to that group bought a “sponsorship,” which included advertising space in the programs for three big events that drew Washington’s real estate elite. The ads did not mention the foundation or anything related to charity. Instead, they promoted Trump’s hotels, with glamorous photos and a phone number to call to make a reservation.

“The foundation wrote a check that essentially bought advertising for Trump hotels?” asked John Edie, the longtime general counsel for the Council on Foundations, when a Post reporter described this arrangement. “That’s not charity.”

The last of the four newly documented expenditures involves the second painting of Trump, which he bought with charity money.
It happened in 2014, during a gala at Mar-a-Lago that raised money for Unicorn Children’s Foundation — a Florida charity that helps children with developmental and learning disorders.

The gala’s main event was a concert by Jon Secada. But there was also an auction of paintings by Havi Schanz, a Miami Beach-based artist.


A painting by artist Havi Schanz of Donald Trump. (Photo provided by Havi Schanz)

Trump with the painting that he bought. (Photo provided by Havi Schanz)
One was of Marilyn Monroe. The other was a four foot-tall portrait of Trump: a younger-looking, mid-’90s Trump, painted in acrylic on top of an old architectural drawing.

Afterward, Schanz recalled in an email, “he asked me about the painting. I said, ‘I paint souls, and when I had to paint you, I asked your soul to allow me.’ He was touched and smiled.”

A few days later, the charity said, a check came from the Trump Foundation. Trump himself gave nothing, according to Sharon Alexander, the executive director of the charity.

Trump’s staff did not respond to questions about where that second painting is now. Alexander said she had last seen it at Trump’s club.

“I’m pretty sure we just left it at Mar-a-Lago,” she said, “and his staff took care of it.”


The Washington Post has contacted more than 250 charities with some ties to the GOP nominee in an effort to find proof of the millions he has said he donated. We've been mostly unsuccessful.
 

jsmith6919

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Jiggyfly

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Obama said couldn't wire money to Iran but that has been refuted. In fact the US wired funds to Iran twice before the recent cash drops. He is ignorant of the system or he was intentional misleading. I choose the latter.
Or you are leaving out other pertinent information.
 

Genghis Khan

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Yeah, it would be terrible for everyone's vote to count instead of just a few state's.

Places with very disparate issues from the handful of major cities would essentially be drowned out.

Isn't that the sort of thing liberals are supposed to pretend to care about?

Oh wait, the major cities are where liberals tend to congregate. Nevermind, I get it now.
 

townsend

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I don't think it would be good for the country to have NY/Chicago/LA etc. decide everything. Nebraska/Kansas/Florida/Montana etc need voices too.
Right, but right now we have Chicago dictating all of Illinois votes, and LA leveraging all of California's votes. What sense does it make to draw a bunch of arbitrary boundaries and then say, "All the peoples votes inside this line will be given to whichever side has the slightest majority."

The current system fails the "popular across the geography" test since it simply disregards any diversity across large states, and allows protocities to shout down rural populations in small states.
 

Genghis Khan

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Right, but right now we have Chicago dictating all of Illinois votes, and LA leveraging all of California's votes. What sense does it make to draw a bunch of arbitrary boundaries and then say, "All the peoples votes inside this line will be given to whichever side has the slightest majority."

The current system fails the "popular across the geography" test since it simply disregards any diversity across large states, and allows protocities to shout down rural populations in small states.
Individual states are indeed diverse in some instances, but less diverse than the country at large.
 

Jiggyfly

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IT "Consultant" going to Reddit for information on how to do secret IT stuff for "VIP".

Seems Legit.
 

townsend

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Individual states are indeed diverse in some instances, but less diverse than the country at large.
I would argue that Dallas has more in common with Chicago than it does with Odessa. Large ass states like Texas and California have more vast and diverse populations than many countries. It's insane that 18 million or so conservative voters in California and about 15 million liberal voters in TX simply have their votes disregarded thanks to a local and arbitrary political disadvantage.

Also the concept of "widespread popularity" doesn't work very well, since the only way a presidential candidate gives a shit about you is if you're a battleground state. It seems like a president that has to worry about their popularity among all voters will do better than someone who has to rack up 2 of the big three states up for grabs.
 

jsmith6919

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IT "Consultant" going to Reddit for information on how to do secret IT stuff for "VIP".

Seems Legit.
An army of reddit users believes it has found evidence that former Hillary Clinton computer specialist Paul Combetta solicited free advice regarding Clinton's private email server from users of the popular web forum.

A collaborative investigation showed a reddit user with the username stonetear requested help in relation to retaining and purging email messages after 60 days, and requested advice on how to remove a "VERY VIP" individual's email address from archived content.

The requests match neatly with publicly known dates related to Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state.

Stonetear has deleted the posts, but before doing so, the pages were archived by other individuals.

"ARCHIVE EVERYTHING YOU CAN!!!!" a person wrote on a popular thread on the Donald Trump-supporting subreddit r/The_Donald, as the entries disappeared.

There are several reasons to believe the reddit user is indeed Combetta, who was granted immunity by the Justice Department during its investigation of Clinton's private server after he deleted a large number of emails.

The evidence connecting Combetta to the account is circumstantial, but also voluminous. The inactive website combetta.com is registered to the email address stonetear@gmail.com, a search of domain registration information using the service whois.com indicates. An account for a person named Paul Combetta on the web bazaar Etsy also has the username stonetear.

And, perhaps most damningly, there are the dates.

On July 24, 2014, stonetear posted to reddit:

Hello all- I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out.

I am not sure if something like this is possible with PowerShell, or exporting all of the emails to MSG and doing find/replaces with a batch processing program of some sort.

Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished?
On July 23, 2014, the House Select Committee on Benghazi had reached an agreement with the State Department on the production of records, according to an FBI report released earlier this month on the bureau's probe of her email use.

Stonetear posted to reddit on Dec. 10, 2014:

Hello- I have a client who wants to push out a 60 day email retention policy for certain users. However, they also want these users to have a 'Save Folder' in their Exchange folder list where the users can drop items that they want to hang onto longer than the 60 day window.

All email in any other folder in the mailbox should purge anything older than 60 days (should not apply to calendar or contact items of course). How would I go about this? Some combination of retention and managed folder policy?
The FBI report says that Cheryl Mills, a longtime Clinton aide and attorney, requested in December 2014 that the email retention policy be shortened to 60 days. The FBI report says Mills "instructed [redacted] to modify the email retention policy on Clinton's clintonemail.com e-mail account" but that "according to [redacted] he did not make these changes to Clinton's clintonemail.com account until March 2015."

The report says the person, essentially identified as Combetta by The New York Times, realized in late March 2015 -- after Clinton's use of a private email account was first reported that month by the Times -- that he had not made the retention change and "had an 'oh sh--' moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015, deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the [Platte River Networks] server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton's emails."
 

townsend

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So much snipe chasing when it comes to these emails. I wonder if nothing will come of it, just like it always does.

Meanwhile we have cancelled checks Donald Trump has signed from his charity to benefit his business. But that's not important, because anonymous internet sleuths are on the case of the missing emails, chapter 140.
 

Cowboysrock55

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So much snipe chasing when it comes to these emails. I wonder if nothing will come of it, just like it always does.

Meanwhile we have cancelled checks Donald Trump has signed from his charity to benefit his business. But that's not important, because anonymous internet sleuths are on the case of the missing emails, chapter 140.
If I'm understanding it correctly, his charity gave money to charities? Scary stuff.
 

L.T. Fan

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If I'm understanding it correctly, his charity gave money to charities? Scary stuff.
Yeah. Organizations the size of Trump's are in constant litigation. They have in house legal staffs because there are contract disagreements all the time.
 

townsend

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If I'm understanding it correctly, his charity gave money to charities? Scary stuff.
He used his charity's funds to benefit his business. The charity to charity donations were used to settle litigation against his for-profit businesses It crosses a very specific line and if it had been the Clinton foundation and not the Trump foundation people would be losing their shit.
 

Cowboysrock55

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He used his charity's funds to benefit his business. The charity to charity donations were used to settle litigation against his for-profit businesses It crosses a very specific line and if it had been the Clinton foundation and not the Trump foundation people would be losing their shit.
To be fair the Clinton's foundation did all kinds of shady stuff. Things like this which are actually scary:

In a separate case, ABC News reports that a top Clinton Foundation donor named Rajiv Fernando was placed on State’s International Security Advisory Board. Fernando appeared significantly less qualified than many of his colleagues, and was appointed at the behest of the secretary’s office. Internal emails show that State staff first sought to cover for Clinton, and then Fernando resigned two days after ABC’s inquiries.

All Trump did was shift charitable money from one charity to another.
 

Angrymesscan

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To be fair the Clinton's foundation did all kinds of shady stuff. Things like this which are actually scary:

In a separate case, ABC News reports that a top Clinton Foundation donor named Rajiv Fernando was placed on State’s International Security Advisory Board. Fernando appeared significantly less qualified than many of his colleagues, and was appointed at the behest of the secretary’s office. Internal emails show that State staff first sought to cover for Clinton, and then Fernando resigned two days after ABC’s inquiries.

All Trump did was shift charitable money from one charity to another.
To pay his personal debt...
 
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