The Donald Trump campaign says it is refunding a donation it illegally accepted from a foreigner—a Muslim, refugee-aiding Canadian who made the contribution as part of a bet to shame a friend into working out.
The Center for Public Integrity reported the donation Monday, and received confirmation from Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks that the $225 contribution was being refunded now that the violation had been flagged.
Campaigns unknowingly accepting donations from foreigners is fairly commonplace, election finance have experts said, and are not typically the source of major scandal on their own.
But the backstory of this particular contribution and how the donor inadvertently prompted a violation of campaign finance law is ironic, to say the least.
The donor, Shahriyar Nasir, is a resident of Toronto, the Center of Public Integrity reported. He his a “proud Muslim” (a group Trump wants to ban from entering the United States), according to his Twitter account, and has worked with a group that aids in the resettlement of Syrian refugees (a practice Trump opposes), the Center for Public Integrity said.
Nasir’s contribution was the result of a bet he made with a friend to encourage the friend to get in shape: a contribution to an “anti-charity” for every time the friend skipped out on going into the gym, according to the report.
“I wanted him to feel the pain of having lost his bet,” Nasir told the Center for Public Integrity. “The donation that you discovered was made with the intent of helping my friend learn a powerful life lesson. Not with the intent of any kind of publicity or actually supporting Trump.”
Nasir made the contribution, which added up to about 300 Canadian dollars, on his own credit card with the understanding that the friend would pay him back, according to the report. Nasir said his friend believed they were donating to the Trump Foundation, Trump’s charity, rather than to the campaign itself.
The two repeatedly made comments about donating to the foundation in a video posted online of them talking about bet, although that video has since been made private, according to the report.
In one moment of the video, Nasir’s friend points to his own bicep and cracked a joke:
“The lack of guns here is a testament to how great your wall is going to be.”
