Trump Reportedly Spent $20000 from Charity on a Giant Portrait of Himself

Both years, that New Jersey charity gave the Donald J. Trump foundation the $150,000 it gave to the police foundation. Trump went on to win a Palm Tree Award for charity from the Florida police foundation at a 2010 ceremony held at his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago Club. But as Fahrenthold reported, in that year's tax filing, when the foundation was asked if it had "furnish [ed] goods, services or facilities" to Trump or "another of its officers", the foundation checked "no". For 250 charities contacted by the Post, donations Trump claimed to have made could not be successfully located.

These donations didn't even qualify as charity, charity expert and Indiana University professor Leslie Lenkowsky told the Post.

In these cases, The Post says, the foundation listed amount of money to a specific charities with their addresses.

For months, the Post's David Farenthold has devoted himself to finding and verifying Trump's often-boasted-about charitable donations. It consists entirely of an unpaid board of directors, which also happens to be Donald Trump, his four eldest children, and an employee of the Trump Organization. "A professional spray-tanner won". Up until 2006, the biggest donor to the Trump Foundation was the man himself. It's a style of philanthropy that closely resembles Trump's modus operandi in business-using other people's money to finance his projects.

According to the Post, at a 2007 benefit, Melania Trump bid $10,000 for a painting of Trump drawn by Michael Israel, "the original speed painter".

Talk about the art of the deal: The charity of Donald Trump once bought a 6-foot painting of the wealthy businessman for $20,000 and supposedly put it at one of his golf courses. Comparatively, the Post reports that Oprah Winfrey's foundation has $242 million in the bank, while the Clinton Foundation-which Trump has continually derided and accused of being at the center of a pay-for-play scheme-had $440 million in the bank at the end of 2014, the Post reports. Last week, the Post also reported that Trump paid a $2,500 fine for using the foundation to make a political contribution to a PAC supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013, whose office at the time was considering an investigation into Trump University.