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New York Attorney General Probes Trump Foundation
| Wall Street Journal | - |
New
York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an inquiry
into the Donald J. Trump Foundation “based on troubling transactions,”
according to a person familiar with the matter.
New York Attorney General Probes Trump Foundation
Schneiderman cites possible ‘impropriety’; Trump team calls him a ‘hack’
ENLARGE
Donald Trump, campaigning Tuesday in Iowa.
Photo:
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News
The person said on Tuesday that the office was concerned about several transactions, the same day Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat, said he was looking into the Trump Foundation on CNN.
“My interest in this issue really is in my capacity as regulator of nonprofits in New York state, and we have been concerned that the Trump Foundation may have engaged in some impropriety,” Mr. Schneiderman said on the network. “We’ve inquired into it and we’ve had correspondence with them and I didn’t make a big deal of it or have press conference but we have been looking into the Trump Foundation to make sure it’s complying with the laws that govern charities in New York.”
The person familiar with the matter declined to specify the nature of the transactions that were under review.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign called Mr. Schneiderman “a partisan hack.”
“This is nothing more than another left-wing hit job designed to distract from Crooked Hillary Clinton’s disastrous week,” said Jason Miller, senior communications adviser for Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Mr. Schneiderman and the Republican presidential candidate have had previous legal clashes. In a 2013 civil lawsuit that is pending, the attorney general sued Mr. Trump’s real estate school. The suit alleged that Trump University lacked proper licensing and defrauded thousands of students out of thousands of dollars.
Mr. Trump denied those allegations, saying students got their money’s worth, and he accused Mr. Schneiderman of “wasting millions in taxpayer money” on a politically motivated probe.
Mr. Trump’s campaign has come under scrutiny for a gift the foundation made to Florida state Attorney General Pam Bondi. The donation was given in 2013 as Ms. Bondi’s office said it was reviewing the civil lawsuit against Trump University.
—Janet Hook contributed to this article.
