Trump Foundation ordered by attorney general’s office to stop fund-raising

New York: The New York attorney general disclosed on Monday that it ordered Donald Trump’s personal charity to cease fund-raising immediately after determining that the foundation was violating state law by soliciting donations without proper authorisation.

The message was conveyed in a “notice of violation” sent Friday to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, of which Trump is president.

The night before, The Washington Post reported that Trump’s foundation — which has subsisted entirely on other people’s donations since 2008 — had failed to register with the state as a charity soliciting money.

Because of that, Trump’s foundation had avoided rigorous annual audits that New York state requires of charities that seek the public’s money. Those audits would have asked, among other things, if the foundation’s money had been used to benefit Trump or one of his businesses.

“The Trump Foundation must immediately cease soliciting contributions or engaging in any other fund-raising activities in New York,” wrote James G. Sheehan, the head of the charities bureau in the office of Attorney-General Eric Schneiderman.

In addition, Sheehan wrote, the Trump Foundation was ordered to supply the state with all the legal paperwork necessary to register as a charity that solicits money within 15 days.

Trump’s foundation must also look back and determine whether it violated state law in prior years by soliciting money without authorisation, Sheehan wrote. If so, it must provide the financial audit reports it should have provided for those years. Those reports, Sheehan said, are also due within 15 days.

If Trump’s foundation does not comply, Sheehan wrote, it will be considered “a continuing fraud upon the people of New York.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks responded in a written statement: “While we remain very concerned about the political motives behind AG Schneiderman’s investigation, the Trump Foundation nevertheless intends to cooperate fully with the investigation. Because this is an ongoing legal matter, the Trump Foundation will not comment further at this time.”

Schneiderman has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the presidential race.

Last month, his office launched a broader probe of the Trump Foundation after stories in The Post identified cases in which Trump appeared to have used the charity’s money to buy portraits of himself and to settle lawsuits involving his for-profit businesses. In addition, Trump’s foundation gave a $25,000 gift to a campaign committee supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Non-profit such as the Trump Foundation are prohibited from giving political gifts.

Legal experts said the move to suspend the Trump Foundation’s ability to raise money is a common reaction in cases in which a charity has solicited funds without authorisation.

“You have to register with the attorney general if you’re going to raise money from the public. And they’re not doing it. So this would happen to anybody,” said Daniel Kurtz, a lawyer in private practice who previously oversaw the New York attorney general’s charities bureau.

“I think this is probably pretty close to a form letter,” Kurtz said of the notice sent to Trump’s foundation.

Trump started his foundation in 1987 to give away the proceeds from his book “The Art of the Deal.” It has no paid employees and a board of five: Trump, three of his children and a longtime Trump Organisation employee. They all work a half-hour per week, according to the foundation’s most recent Internal Revenue Service filing.

For years, Trump himself was the Trump Foundation’s only source of money: Between 1987 and 2006, he donated $5.4 million.

But by the end of 2006, Trump had given away almost all the money he had put in — leaving $4,238 in the foundation’s coffers. His giving abruptly shrank and then dried up: Trump gave $35,000 in 2007 and $30,000 in 2008 and made no donations at all after that, tax records show.

Instead, Trump’s name-branded charity has been sustained entirely by other people’s money. Some of those donors have not said whether Trump himself solicited their gifts.