Trump’s History Of Corruption, Double-Dealing And Fraud
By Samuel Warde
The Washington Post published
an outstanding piece on September 5 entitled: “Trump’s history of corruption is
mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?“.
The
article begins by discussing the recent controversy surrounding his $25,000
donation to a PAC backing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s re-election,
questioning why the scandal has not received more coverage.
In the heat of a presidential campaign, you’d think that a story about one party’s nominee giving a large contribution to a state attorney general who promptly shut down an inquiry into that nominee’s scam “university” would be enormous news. But we continue to hear almost nothing about what happened between Donald Trump and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.”
Bondi’s office
had received at least 22 fraud complaints in 2013 from Floridians who “claimed
they were cheated by Trump University,” according to Paul Waldman of The Washington Post. The Orlando
Sentinel looked into the matter.
“Bondi’s office vowed to look into
the matter in a story that ran on Sept. 14, 2013.”
Three days
later, Trump’s charitable foundation cut a check to a committee supporting
Bondi’s re-election campaign — for $25,000.
The following day “her office
decided not to pursue the complaints” and declined to join a lawsuit over Trump
University filed by the Attorney General of the State of New York.
The Washington Post‘s David A. Fahrenthold reported last week that the Trump Foundation subsequently paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS, because it’s illegal for organizations like his foundation to make political donations.
And this kind of
abuse is common according to Waldman. “[T]ruth is that you’d have to work
incredibly hard to find a politician who has the kind of history of corruption,
double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump has. The number of stories which
could potentially deserve hundreds and hundreds of articles is absolutely
staggering.”
Waldman published a “partial list”
of 12 stories, we are listing four of them here for your review and you can click here for Waldman’s article and full list.
- The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money
- The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins
- Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did
- The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company
Samuel Warde is a writer, social and
political activist, and all-around troublemaker.