Donald Trump spoke to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi before his charity cut a 2013 check to support her re-election effort, but his campaign said Tuesday the two never discussed whether her office would join a lawsuit against Trump University. "I never spoke to her". "Never spoke to her about that at all", Trump said. "Never spoken to her about it".
And shortly before Bondi dropped the fraud case, she received a $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation - a donation that was likely illegal since, as a non-profit, the Trump Foundation can't donate money to a political campaign.
BONDI: No. This is about, what she is saying is about - no. A Trump Organization spokesman told the Post the candidate reimbursed the foundation for the money.
Q: So what were you hoping to get out of that donation?
In recent months, a lot has been made of the overlapping interests of Hillary Clinton and the global elite that fund her family foundation. "I've been obviously devastated over this", she said in a voice mail message that The Tampa Bay Times said she left with one of its reporters in June. "I give to everybody".
Bookbinder says the timing of Trump's gift was also suspicious, coming just days after a newspaper reported that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi's office was reviewing a lawsuit that the state of NY had filed against Trump University. "I just have a lot of respect for her and she's very popular", he said. Trump and his team also failed to disclose the gift to the Internal Revenue Service, instead reporting that the donation was given to an unrelated group with a similar name - effectively obscuring the contribution.
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In March, Trump told the Post the donation emanated from a filing error by an employee.
"The only one that did was (New York Attorney General) Eric Schneiderman, who is a Hillary Clinton supporter".
"There's a problem first of all with a charity giving a political contribution and then it looks like there's a problem with giving false information to the IRS", said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group.
A Trump Organization senior vice president told the Post that it was "an honest mistake" that the contribution wasn't properly listed.
In assessing that "series of coincidences and errors", it's important to remember that Trump has bragged, openly and without apparent shame, about buying politicians with donations, known in shorthand as "pay to play". "I'm going to continue to raise this, because I think it is a fundamental issue about him in this campaign that we're going to talk about in one way or another for the next 62 days, because he clearly has something to hide".
"Donald Trump has no standing whatsoever to question the Clinton Foundation, which works to make AIDS and malaria drugs more accessible, when it's been proven he uses his own foundation to launder illegal campaign donations", according to a statement Palmieri released after news broke of the IRS fine.
