Did Trump backdate his charity’s $25,000 check to Pam Bondi’s PAC by four days? Or was it sent, as Bondi AND Trump now say, in response to Bondi’s phone solicitation of a donation from Trump made (according now to Bondi herself) not weeks before the Orlando Sentinel reported that Bondi’s office was considering joining a fraud lawsuit against Trump U. but instead—coincidentally, of course—only a few days before the Sentinel reporter phoned Bondi’s office and inquired about the office’s plans regarding that lawsuit?
Last night I clicked on the NYT website and saw a prominently-featured article by Kevin Sack and Steve Eder titled “New Records Shed Light on Donald Trump’s $25,000 Gift to Florida Official.” The article lays out a sequence of events concerning Trump’s charity’s Sept. 2013 check to Florida AG Pam Bondi’s 2014-reelection-campaign PAC.
The check, it was reported earlier in various news articles in the last three months arrived at the PAC four days after an article was published in the Orlando Sentinel reporting that Bondi’s office was considering joining a lawsuit** filed two weeks earlier by New York AG Eric Schneiderman alleging concerted fraud by Trump University and Trump Institute victimizing a significant number of New Yorkers. The fraud also victimized a number of Floridians.
Most of the news reports on this came earlier this month after it was reported that nonprofit Trump Foundation had paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS for violating tax law concerning the political donation. It hadn’t been of sufficient importance to the political news media and punditry to give these reports real attention, partly, I think, because it hadn’t been of sufficient important to Hillary Clinton to mention this and drive it home in public statements; only news about the content of this or that Clinton email, especially if it tied in, however trivially, with the Clinton Foundation, could (and did) attain news-media-frenzy/inundation-of-coverage status.
And Clinton and her campaign didn’t think to have Clinton herself educate the public about this or anything else about Trump if it didn’t already come out of Trump’s mouth or his Twitter feed. Anything about Trump that Trump wanted hidden managed to be hidden almost completely from most of the public that doesn’t read the Washington Post or the New York Times. Or the Orlando Sentinel. And Clinton was fine with that, apparently. Or fine enough not to make an issue of any of it, since Trump himself wasn’t talking about it.
But here’s something that those news reports from earlier this month reported, concerning the timing of a phone call from Bondi to Trump, reported initially back in June when the story first broke nationally (for roughly three minutes), in which she solicited a campaign donation from him, according to Bondi herself. And it conflicts materially, as AGs would say (“material” and “materially” are big in legalese), with what Bondi is now saying was the timeline.
In the reports earlier this month, Bondi was saying that her phone solicitation of Trump occurred several weeks before the Sentinel article was published on Sept. 13, 2013, reporting that “saying that Ms. Bondi’s office would ‘determine whether Florida should join the multistate case.’” If I recall correctly, one article quoted Bondi or her spokesperson as placing the timing of the phone call as sometime in July.
In any event, Bondi was saying earlier this month that her phone solicitation of Trump was part of a midsummer series of routine campaign solicitations to wealthy Republicans who lived mostly or largely in Florida (as Trump does), and that therefore she could not reasonably be said to have been trying to extort a donation from Trump, whose foundation’s check arrived at her PAC four days after the Sentinel article was published.
But now Bondi is claiming, according to the Sack and Eder article (which no longer is anywhere on the Times’ opening online page, best as I could tell, even though it was published online only last night and appears on the front page of today’s paper), that her phone call to Trump actually occurred in … late summer 2013, although no precise date is offered. And that Bondi—and Trump—are now saying that Trump’s foundation’s check indeed was sent in response to Bondi’s phone solicitation.
But, not to worry, folks. The Times story reports that the foundation’s check, signed by Donald J. Trump—is he the foundation’s treasurer?—is dated Sept. 8, 2013. The article includes a photocopy of the front and back of the check.
That’s right; the check arrived four days after the Sentinel article was published, but it was dated four days before the article was published.*
The Sack and Eder article, however, reports that the Sentinel reporter first contacted Bondi’s office by phone on August 29, 2013 to inquire whether her office would be joining the New York case on behalf of 23 Floridians who had filed fraud complaints with that office, one filed after Bondi assumed office in January 2011, the others during her immediate predecessor’s term. And that the phone call set off a series of internal inquiries resulting in a response to the reporter from Bondi’s communications director, to whom the reporter had placed the call, saying that “We are currently reviewing the allegations in the New York complaint.”
Sack and Eder detail what occurred:
It was Aug. 29, 2013, an unremarkable day inside Florida’s whitewashed Capitol, and a typically sweltering one outside among the mossbearded oaks and sabal palms. Around 3:45 p.m., Jennifer Meale, the communications director for Attorney General Pam Bondi, fielded a seemingly routine call from a financial reporter for The Orlando Sentinel. The attorney general of New York had recently filed a lawsuit against Donald J. Trump alleging fraud in the marketing of Trump University’s real estate and wealthbuilding seminars. Had Florida ever conducted its own investigation, the reporter asked.
The call set off an exchange of emails between Ms. Meale and top lawyers in the office. She learned that 23 complaints about Trumprelated education enterprises had been filed before Ms. Bondi became attorney general in 2011, and one since. They had never generated a formal investigation, she wrote the reporter, but added, “We are currently reviewing the allegations in the New York complaint.”
The Sentinel’s report, which was published on Sept. 13, 2013, paraphrased Ms. Meale’s response and took it a step further, saying that Ms. Bondi’s office would “determine whether Florida should join the multistate case.”
Four days later, a check for $25,000 from the Donald J. Trump Foundation landed in the Tampa office of a political action committee that had been formed to support Ms. Bondi’s 2014 election. In mid-October, her office announced that it would not be acting on the Trump University complaints.
The proximate timing of the Sentinel article and Mr. Trump’s donation, and suspicions of a quid pro quo, have driven a narrative that has dogged Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi for three years. It has intensified during Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, peaking this month with the filing of ethics complaints, calls for a federal investigation by editorial boards and Democrats in Congress, and a new investigation of Mr. Trump’s foundation by New York regulators.
But documents obtained this week by The New York Times, including a copy of Mr. Trump’s check, at least partly undercut that timeline. Although the check was received by Ms. Bondi’s committee four days after the Sentinel report, and was recorded as such in her financial disclosure filings, it was actually dated and signed by Mr. Trump four days before the article appeared.
The check’s date does not categorically demonstrate that Mr. Trump was not seeking to influence Ms. Bondi, a fellow Republican. Even as he has denied trying to do so in this instance, he has boasted brazenly and repeatedly during his presidential campaign that he has made copious campaign contributions over the past two decades, including to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, in order to buy access and consideration for his business dealings. Politicians in Florida, which Mr. Trump considers his second home, have been among his leading beneficiaries.
An analysis of public records shows he has contributed at least $375,000 to state and federal candidates and political committees here since 1995, accounting for 19 percent of the roughly $2 million he has given to campaigns nationwide, other than his own. Although not unprecedented, his $25,000 gift to And Justice for All, the committee supporting Ms. Bondi, is among his largest.
What is more, when Mr. Trump wrote that check, he still theoretically had reason to be concerned that Florida’s attorney general could become a player in the legal assault on Trump University. Through 2010, when the company ceased operations, Florida had been one of the most lucrative markets for his unaccredited forprofit school. It ranked second among states in purchases, with 950 transactions, and third in sales, at $3.3 million, according to an analysis of sales data revealed in court filings.
The lawsuit by New York’s Democratic attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, which was announced on Aug. 25, 2013 — two weeks before Mr. Trump wrote the check to And Justice for All on Sept. 9 — did not cite allegations from consumers in Florida. But news organizations had reported as early as 2010 that the attorneys general of Florida and Texas had fielded complaints from consumers who had paid up to $35,000 for Mr. Trump’s seminars and mentoring programs. His contribution, therefore, could have been a preemptive investment to discourage Ms. Bondi from joining the New York case.
And then the coup de grace paragraphs of today’s Times article:
Brian Ballard, Mr. Trump’s lobbyist in Florida, said it was “ridiculous” to think his client sought to buy off Ms. Bondi. “I’m the Trump Organization lobbyist, and he has never, ever brought up Trump University with me,” he said. “It wasn’t something of concern to him. With Donald Trump, if a friend calls up and says, ‘Listen, I’m running for XYZ, could you help me?’ his instinct is to say yes. That’s all it was.”
Yet, even those who doubt anything nefarious between Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi acknowledge that they bear blame for the intensifying focus on the appearance of a conflict. For his part, Mr. Trump fanned the embers by sending the contribution from his nonprofit foundation, which cannot under federal law make political donations.
When questions arose this year, he agreed to refund $25,000 to the foundation from his personal account and pay a $2,500 penalty to the Internal Revenue Service. Trump officials have called the mix-up an inadvertent error by his staff. Ms. Bondi, meanwhile, has failed to explain why she accepted Mr. Trump’s check even after learning that her office was examining the New York case against Trump University. Six months later, she allowed him to host a $3,000-per-head fundraiser for her at his Mara-Lago Club in Palm Beach. Mr. Trump attended the event, which records indicate raised at least $50,000.
No, on second thought I think maybe this is the coup de grace in the article:
Now, with the revelation of the date on Mr. Trump’s check — which came in a release of correspondence by Mr. Schneiderman — it appears that Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi had in their possession a piece of favorable evidence that they bewilderingly failed to disclose.
“All these things come together in a way that if you don’t unpack the whole thing, the unspoken implications coalesce to create this great suspicion,” said Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Florida Republican strategist and lobbyist who disdains Mr. Trump and has never worked with Ms. Bondi. “The optics are terrible even though there is not a shred of evidence that Pam Bondi solicited a bribe or that Donald Trump provided one.”
Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi have said they share a long friendship, but the origins of it are not apparent. Ms. Bondi, who declined requests for an interview, initially backed former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida for president. After he withdrew from the race, she endorsed Mr. Trump the day before Florida’s March 15 primary, snubbing the state’s other favorite son, Senator Marco Rubio.
The only woman currently holding statewide elected office in Florida, she has since become an enthusiastic Trump surrogate. Ms. Bondi became a conservative darling in 2010 when, as an assistant state attorney, she won her post in her first campaign of any kind. Her political future is unclear as she faces a two-term limit and has said she will not run for governor in 2018.
It was in late summer 2013, as her reelection campaign was gearing up, that Ms. Bondi called Mr. Trump to solicit the donation, aides to both of them have said; they have declined to provide a precise date. Records show that Mr. Trump had already donated $500 to Ms. Bondi’s campaign on July 15.
His daughter Ivanka Trump donated another $500 on Sept. 10. The Texas attorney general’s office, then under Greg Abbott, a Republican, had also decided in 2010 not to act on complaints against Trump University when it left the state. Mr. Trump later donated $35,000 to Mr. Abbott’s successful 2014 campaign for governor. Mr. Abbott’s office has denied there was any connection. No other attorneys general have joined Mr. Schneiderman’s litigation.
The Times, of course, can’t explicitly suggest in a news article that Trump may have backdated by a week of so that check from his foundation to place its issuance to a barely-comfortable and conveniently clairvoyant four days before publication of the Sentinel article. But it can, well, intimate it, by, say, saying:
Now, with the revelation of the date on Mr. Trump’s check — which came in a release of correspondence by Mr. Schneiderman — it appears that Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi had in their possession a piece of favorable evidence that they bewilderingly failed to disclose.
But accepting the date of that check as accurate, the date coupled with the Aug. 29 2013 date in which the Sentinel reporter first contacted Bondi’s office—and the admission now by both Bondi and Trump that Bondi’s phone solicitation to him came not in July and not several weeks before the article was published but a couple of weeks before it was published and likely after the Sentinel reporter first inquired to her office about whether that office might join the New York lawsuit filed two weeks earlier.
A phone inquiry likely prompted by a call to the business reporter by one of the complainants to the Florida AG’s office upon learning of the New York AG’s lawsuit. I mean—donchathink?
Which highlights three things: One, that Trump habitually pays to silence government officials and private individuals about his scams—including possibly some bank-loan scams that were never investigated for what they sure sound like they were. Why weren’t these investigated?
Another is how perfect an example of what Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have made so central to their political messages: that the economic and legal systems are rigged by people and industries that sponsor political campaigns, not on issues but of candidates including officials running for reelection or higher office.
And finally, this: Why is it that Republican AGs—the self-styled champions of the working class—in the states in which the largest numbers of fraud complaints against Trump U. and Trump Institute unconcerned about the complaints? But all the way back in 2013 the New York state AG, unlike, say, Bondi and Abbott, a member of the elite—was?
I don’t expect the questions I’ve raised here, including in that last paragraph, to be mentioned by pundits or by Clinton, since they don’t involve anything that Trump has said or tweeted within the last 24 hours (or ever), and they have nothing to do with racism, xenophobia, misogyny, anti-gay sentiment—or foreign affairs. And therefore since moderate Republicans, to the extent that they care at all, are fine with the issues I’ve discussed.
Still, on the remote chance that Clinton and some pundits could actually draw attention to them, I hope that someone who matters reads this post. Although I won’t hold my breath, because I want to be alive to continue posting about this kind of stuff.
Even if ignored.
____
*Sentence corrected 9/16 at 9:20 a.m. The cut-and-paste error, in which the clause after the comma was the same as the clause before the comma, was evident.
** Link added 9/16 at 10:00 a.m.
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
There are a dozen or more examples of things that Trump has done or said that would have sunk any other conventional candidate, that will sink the careers of conventional politicians in the future. He throws up so much bullshit that it forms a seemingly impenetrable protective cloud protecting him from conventional — or any other — reproaches or condemnations. He has spent a lifetime avoiding the consequences for his actions. He is the ultimate shape-shifter or juju man. But his supporters do not care. They are in the mood for destruction, and if all conventions are to be tossed to the winds, if the entire constitutional order of the country is to be upended, so be it — as long as he promises to tear down DC.
Has anybody looked at the Foundation checks before and after the $25,000.00 check to see if the check was backdated? If the check numbered before the $25,000.00 check is dated after the $25,000.00 check, then Trump deliberately tried to disguise the source of the bribe by backdating the check. Also, check to see when they were cashed or deposited in case Trump was clever enough to back date many checks.
The article is accompanied by the PDF-formatted photocopies of the front and back of the canceled check, but the printing showing the date it was cancelled is too small for me to read.
But the period at issue is eight days, and here’s guessing that the check was made out on a little-used checking account, maybe the account used only for donations–and this foundation apparently didn’t make a lot of those.
What a bunch of horse poop is I ever saw it. First nobody ever forced anybody to sign up for any school. Second nobody ever promised or guaranteed success. The success part is totally up to you. Third there is no law against making a campaign contribution even if the timing has bad optics. Forth the FBI says that they cannot prove or disprove intent. Fifth if MS57 just substituted HRC for Trump in the comment it would be spot on correct. You all have to dig real hard to find any significant dirt on Trump while the corruption crap from HRC which is 10 times worse just seems to keep flowing like a political sewer. HRC could murder the pope and you would all cover for her and say it didn’t happen.
So bald misrepresentation about what the product is–a.k.a., fraud–is fine, right?
Obviously, you think the fraud claims are that the sales pitch guaranteed success, rather than that specific representations about the instructors and course material were false. Why not actually read an article about the specifics of the claim, William, before making statements based on idiotic presumptions?
Bev, give us a brake; pay for play and that the elite were punished enough by public embarrassment, has been public policies sense we let Nixon retire instead of jailing him. Plus in today’s politics $25,000.00 is pocket change.
Here’s the brake I’ll give you: This isn’t ordinary pay-to-play, in which the payer wants a specific policy or favor that doesn’t involve a prosecutor’s office or a government agency charged with civil enforcement dropping a criminal or civil-law-enforcement investigation or a decision not to pursue possible criminal charges or civil-law-enforcement action.
That’s overt bribery or extortion of a prosecutor or civil-law-enforcement official, not pay-to-play, Beene. And it’s unequivocally illegal under the federal criminal code and the state criminal code in, surely, every single state.
What a ridiculous comment.
Btw, what you want me to give you is a break, not a brake. I think.
Bev, thanks for the help with brake correctly being break.
You’re missing the point of my post which is laws are for only the poor today, or someone who is out of political favor.
Well, you do have a point there, Beene. I think most people actually have no idea how thoroughly true that is.
William Ryan,
1) No, no one ever forced anyone to sign up for Trump U.; rather, they were duped into paying for something Trump U. never delivered. That business model is called fraud – the suits in NY call it racketeering — and he now practices it in the political arena. Besides, what you or I say about it is inconsequential: listen to those who were defrauded — if you are intellectuality honest that is:
E.g., “as soon as I attended the first workshop, I knew I had been scammed. Every single workshop, they charged you another amount. Everything was to get you to spend more and more and more.”
E.g., “I wasted my entire life savings on Trump. I spent $1,495 on the Trump three-day seminar and $24,995 on the Trump Gold Elite mentorship package, only to be demeaned and belittled. I feel like such a fool.”
Trump has already admitted in court that: 1) His involvement was “completely absent” (though the program promised his involvement); he did not participate in events, teaching or content of the program (so what did he, in fact, do to earn the $5 million he walked away with?); he did “not even know if students received a degree.”
2) No, there is no law against making a campaign contribution, no matter the optics. But there is a law against bribing public officials, and the only way to find that out if that happened is for the parties involved to come clean. If there is no there there, prove it. As Beverly made perfectly clear, in a post you don’t seem to have read, not only are they not coming clean, they are evading it, now apparently in collusion. Evidence abounds, and the parties have not come clean.
3) The FBI is not investigating Trump U., states are including NY and CA (but, as we know, not FL!) The states will prove intent, not the FBI.
4) Who but a morally corrupt person would devise a racket to defraud customers? Moral corruption is the bane of mankind, but it is not a crime. You may rave against her all you like, just don’t immunize him from the same category simply because he is your candidate. If you can’t see it, you’re blind — or worse, willfully blind.
Sorry for yours and others loss on the deception from a Trump organization if you really feel that Trump was behind it I would Agree with you premise thought and comments whole heartedly but I do not in my minds eye believe that Mr. Trump was behind the fraud. What I believe is that the so called university was more about teaching people how to take measured risks in the real estate world for positive out comes. If you learned from your failures to see the risk did you actually fail to learn? About the same time period you invested in Trump I invested in actual real estate for about the same amount and my risk-investment is today worth about 4x more. What you really need to learn how to measure risk much better and to me that includes your voting for HRC is much higher risk to everything we cherish, love and work for. Remember the old PT Barnum adage of a sucker being born every minute, well that is still true today.
William Ryan,
Unsurprisingly, you miss the point entirely – willfully. You don’t believe Trump was behind the fraud? His name was on the project! Just because Trump’s notion of taking responsibility for his actions is that of a juvenile doesn’t mean you should adopt his point of view. As it turns out, the greatest risk for his “students,” many of whom lost tens of thousands of dollars, had nothing to do with learning how to take measured risks and everything to do with believing Trump in the first place. “Mr. Trump” (what, are you angling for a job?) hoodwinked and defrauded them – the very same regular Joes he claims to be fighting for. Hoodwinking and fraud are his defining characteristics. Talk about suckers.
One suspects the ‘students’ hoodwinked & defrauded themselves.
Richard Feynmann: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself-& you are the easiest person to fool”
Diogenesed,
How exactly does one defraud oneself? Fraud is based on deliberate deception. Try as one might, no one is capable of deceiving oneself into diving from a hundred foot cliff into a teaspoon of water.
It’s akin to holding the murdered responsible for his own death. If the defrauded or murdered are solely responsible for their fate, why are fraud and murder crimes?
“…& you are the easiest person to fool”