From a tax lawyer: Crash course on Trump's most-recently-admitted corruption
A friend who is a tax lawyer has this to say about WAPO's piece on the orange one's taxes:
The Donald J. Trump Foundation--controlled by Trump--has FINALLY (as of yesterday) admitted that it engaged in corruption (euphemistically known as "self-dealing"
, both in 2015 and in prior years. Because of the "self-" portion of self-dealing, this is an admission that Trump took charitable funds and spent them on himself or his family members--exactly like my example from a few months ago of my using my charity's funds to pay my personal mortgage. (Actually, worse--the rules for private foundations are stricter than for public charities because by definition they are henhouses guarded by foxes.)
The admission comes in the "information return" the Trump Foundation is required to file annually with the IRS.
The usual process for filing is that each year exempt orgs send their information returns to the IRS. A few months later, the IRS sends them on to Guidestar, a website where they are available for public review. The Trump Foundation's information is thus available at https://www.guidestar.org/profile/13-3404773. So, in the normal course, the returns provided to Guidestar have been signed, dated, and delivered via the IRS complete with the date on which the IRS received them stamped on the first page (giving assurance they were in fact filed).
Yesterday, Guidestar posted the Trump Foundation's return for 2015. Oddly, the return isn't dated or file-stamped, and was "provided by the organization" to Guidestar--NOT by the IRS.
The only (nonfraudulent) reason I can think of for a company to do this is get them posted quickly.
Here, given the odd routing and lack of date, it's pretty clear this is an effort at revisionist history--an attempt to claim that Trump came clean of his own accord and thus was not lying when he accused David Fahrenthold & The Washington Post of lying about his theft of public funds--which is what money held in charities is.
The Washington Post brings out some other interesting information in them--more assignment of income (illegal) by Trump, payment from a Ukranian official, acknowledgements that portraits and a helmet the foundation spent tens of thousands of dollars on are actually only worth $1650--but they explain all of that far better than I can.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-foundation-apparently-admits-to-violating-ban-on-self-dealing-new-filing-to-irs-shows/2016/11/22/893f6508-b0a9-11e6-8616-52b15787add0_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
? 
?
