New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said on Tuesday that his office is looking into the Trump Foundation and whether or not the charity complied with state laws.
“My interest in this issue really is in my capacity as regulator of non-profits in New York state, and we have been concerned that the Trump Foundation may have engaged in some impropriety from that point of view,” Schneiderman told CNN.
“And we’ve inquired into it, and we’ve had correspondence with them. I didn’t make a big deal out of it or hold a press conference,” he continued. “But we have been looking into the Trump Foundation to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”
The Trump campaign dismissed the New York attorney general’s inquiry into the candidate’s namesake foundation as a “left-wing hit job.”
“Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is a partisan hack who has turned a blind eye to the Clinton Foundation for years and has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “This is nothing more than another left-wing hit job designed to distract from Crooked Hillary Clinton’s disastrous week.”
Sources told both CNN and Buzzfeed News that the New York attorney general’s office is looking into specific “troubling transactions” made by the Trump Foundation.
The New York state inquiry comes after a series of reports in the Washington Post revealed how the Trump Foundation spends its money. A report over the weekend revealed that Donald Trump has not contributed to his own charity since 2008, and that the foundation instead made donations to charities with contributions made to the Trump Foundation by other people. The Washington Post also reported that Trump spent the foundation’s money on gifts for himself, including a six-foot-tall portrait of Trump.
Trump also recently had to pay a $2,500 penalty to the IRS for his foundation’s contribution to a political committee backing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013.
