But Mann, the former charity watchdog, is skeptical. Trump's foundation has described that contribution as a mistake and says Trump paid a penalty to the IRS. The Trump Foundation broke IRS rules, too, when it made a contribution to a superPAC supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013. This month, New York's attorney general ordered the foundation to stop fundraising in the state. Instead, his foundation raises money from other donors, as it did at a fundraiser for veterans Trump held in January that raised $1.6 million in contributions, according to the Trump Foundation's website.īut that got the Trump Foundation in trouble, because technically it's not registered to accept donations in New York state, where it's based. But as reporting by the Washington Post shows, Trump hasn't given any of his own money to the foundation since 2008. It was originally set up to give away Donald Trump's money. The Trump Foundation is organized as a private foundation. She is now a partner at Carter Ledyard & Milburn, LLP. "The Trump Foundation has engaged in documented, flagrant acts of violation," said Pamela Mann, a former head of the charities bureau in the New York attorney general's office.
The Trump Foundation and concerns beyond appearancesĬharities experts have an entirely different set of concerns about the Trump Foundation - concerns that go beyond appearance. And it undermines the credibility of decisions." Even if, as secretary of state, she did not concern herself at all with what big donors wanted, people will think that it did, in fact, influence her. And the concern is when they get a large contribution, it will influence the decision they make. Still, Noble said, appearances matter, "because we're talking about government officials. But there's no evidence that big donors got any special favors from the State Department. Emails between the staff at the Clinton Foundation and State Department show that some of those donors wanted access to Hillary Clinton, and that she did take meetings with some of them as secretary of state. It's true that the Clinton Foundation accepts money from wealthy donors, both inside the U.S. "Her foundation took in large payments from major corporations and wealthy individuals, foreign and domestic, and all while she was secretary of state," Trump said at a rally in Akron, Ohio, in August, for example. "Less than 10 cents on the dollar in the Clinton Foundation has gone to charitable causes," Pence charged.īut charities experts say that statement is misleading.īut there's another criticism of the Clinton Foundation, one that Donald Trump himself has raised on the campaign trail. It has no full-time employees and a budget of about $600,000.ĭuring the vice presidential debate earlier this month, Republican Mike Pence argued that the Clinton Foundation is basically a slush fund for its founders. Trump Foundation, by contrast, is fairly small.
It has hundreds of employees and a $90 million budget. The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, as it's formally known, is huge. The most obvious difference between the two foundations is scale. And seems to be more focused on Donald Trump." "One of them is very professionally run and does a lot of work. "I think they're two very different types of charities," said Larry Noble, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C.
But the differences between them might reveal something about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Beyond that, charities experts say, they have remarkably little in common. And they've both become political targets in this election cycle. The Clinton Foundation and the Trump Foundation have similar-sounding names.