Domain 11
Charitable and Philanthropic Abuse
Misuse of charitable organizations and philanthropic fraud.
19 entries
Targeting Nonprofit Organizations: Executive Actions to Revoke Tax-Exempt Status of Universities and Advocacy Groups Critical of Administration Policies
2025 - 2026
Beginning in early 2025, the Trump administration took a series of actions targeting the tax-exempt status of nonprofit organizations that had been critical of or had come into conflict with administr...
Conditioning Disaster Relief on Political Compliance: Trump Threatened to Withhold Federal Wildfire Aid from California Over Water Policy and Voter ID Demands
2025 - 2025
In January 2025, devastating wildfires swept through the Los Angeles area, destroying thousands of structures and displacing tens of thousands of residents. As the fires raged, President Donald Trump ...
Monetizing the Presidency: The Save America PAC Slush Fund, Legal Bill Payments, and the Merchandising of Political Office
2020 - 2024
Following his 2020 election loss, Donald Trump created a political fundraising apparatus that raised hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters under the banner of fighting election fraud, then s...
Presidential Inaugural Committee: $750,000 Settlement for Misuse of Nonprofit Funds and Hotel Overpayments
2017 - 2022
The 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee, organized as a nonprofit 501(c)(4), raised a record $107 million in donations for events surrounding Donald Trump's January 20, 2017 inauguration. The DC Att...
Inflated Generosity Claims: Presidential Salary Donations Offset by Agency Cuts, Unsubstantiated Charitable Giving, and Credit for Others' Philanthropy
2016 - 2026
Donald Trump has a documented history of publicly claiming charitable generosity that is not supported by the available evidence, including inflated claims about personal donations, publicized preside...
Veterans Fundraiser: $6 Million Raised at Iowa Rally with Months-Long Delay in Distribution
2016 - 2016
On January 28, 2016, Donald Trump skipped a Fox News Republican primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa, and instead held a competing televised fundraiser billed as a benefit for veterans' organizations. T...
Veterans Fundraiser as Debate Alternative: Using a Charitable Event for Political Advantage
2016 - 2016
On January 28, 2016, Donald Trump boycotted the Fox News Republican presidential primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa, citing what he called biased treatment by debate moderator Megyn Kelly. As an alter...
The Trump Foundation's Final Accounting: Court-Supervised Dissolution, $2 Million in Restitution, and a Complete Record of Self-Dealing
2016 - 2019
On November 7, 2019, New York Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla issued the final judgment in the case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against the Donald J. Trump Foundation, D...
Charity Golf Tournaments: Trump's Pattern of Hosting Charitable Events at His Courses While Pocketing Fees and Rigging Prize Payouts
2010 - 2019
Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, whose investigation into Trump's charitable claims won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, documented a pattern in which Donald Trump used chari...
Fake Charitable Pledges: Pattern of Unfulfilled Donations and the 2016 Veterans Fundraiser
2009 - 2017
Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold conducted a systematic investigation into Donald Trump's charitable pledges between 2015 and 2016, contacting more than 400 major charities to verify whether...
Phantom Charitable Donations: The Washington Post Investigation into Trump's Unfulfilled Pledges to Give to Charity
2008 - 2019
In 2016, Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold conducted a systematic investigation into Donald Trump's history of charitable giving. The investigation, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Nati...
Self-Dealing Purchases: Charity Funds Used to Buy Personal Items Including Portraits and a Tim Tebow Helmet
2007 - 2019
As part of the broader dissolution case against the Donald J. Trump Foundation, the New York Attorney General documented multiple instances in which Trump used charitable funds to purchase personal it...
Eric Trump Foundation and St. Jude: Charity Golf Fundraiser Revenue Redirected Through Trump Organization Properties
2007 - 2017
Beginning in 2007, Eric Trump hosted an annual Golf Invitational fundraiser at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. E...
Profiting from Charity at Mar-a-Lago: How Trump Charged Nonprofits Full Venue Rates While Claiming Credit for Their Philanthropic Work
2006 - 2017
For more than a decade, Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, served as a venue for charity galas hosted by prominent nonprofit organizations, including local chapters of the American...
Charity as a Stage: Trump Used Others' Philanthropic Events for Self-Promotion and Steered Charity Donations to Mar-a-Lago
2005 - 2017
Over more than a decade, Donald Trump exhibited a documented pattern of inserting himself into other organizations' charitable activities for personal publicity, while simultaneously using his private...
9/11 False Claims: Fabricating a Role at Ground Zero, Promoting a Debunked Conspiracy Theory, and Collecting a Recovery Grant Meant for Small Businesses
2001 - 2019
Over nearly two decades, Donald Trump made a series of false or unsubstantiated claims about his actions and experiences related to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including claims that he ...
The Giving Pledge Gap: Trump's Pattern of Promised Donations and Undelivered Charitable Commitments
2001 - 2021
Despite publicly claiming a net worth of $10 billion or more throughout his presidential campaigns and presidency, Donald Trump never signed the Giving Pledge, the public commitment created in 2010 by...
Trump Foundation: Court-Ordered Dissolution for Illegal Self-Dealing and Campaign Finance Violations
1988 - 2019
The Donald J. Trump Foundation, a tax-exempt private foundation incorporated in 1988, was dissolved by court order in December 2018 after the New York Attorney General's office established a pattern o...
Trump's Personal Charitable Giving Record: Decades of Inflated Claims, Foundation Funded by Others, and No Personal Donations After 2008
1988 - 2018
Over a period of decades, Donald Trump cultivated a public image as a generous philanthropist. Investigative reporting, primarily by David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post, revealed that Trump's per...