Trump hits ‘political hacks in New York’ after settling Trump Foundation lawsuit

President Trump on Thursday lashed out at New York’s Democratic attorney general, accusing Letitia James of “deliberately mischaracterizing” a settlement in a lawsuit involving his charity for “political purposes.”

“I am the only person I know, perhaps the only person in history, who can give major money to charity ($19M), charge no expense, and be attacked by the political hacks in New York State. No wonder why we are all leaving!” Trump said in a statement issued on Twitter Thursday evening. 

“Every penny of the $19 million raised by the Trump Foundation went to hundreds of great charitable causes with almost no expenses. The New York Attorney General is deliberately mischaracterizing this settlement for political purposes,” the president continued.

A Manhattan judge earlier Thursday ordered Trump to pay $2 million to nonprofit groups as part of a settlement in a civil lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general’s office last year that alleged he used his charity’s funds for personal and political means. The dispute centered on $2.8 million raised by the Trump Foundation at a 2016 fundraiser for military veterans.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla ruled Thursday that Trump “breached his fiduciary duty to the Foundation” by allowing “his campaign to orchestrate the Fundraiser, allowing his campaign, instead of the Foundation, to direct distribution of the Funds, and using the Fundraiser and distribution of the Funds to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign.”

Scarpulla said that she ordered Trump to pay $2 million in damages rather than $2.8 million — the amount the attorney general had argued for — because the funds ultimately reached their intended destinations, veterans charities.

The lawsuit, filed by then-New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood in June 2018, named Trump, his three eldest children and the Trump Foundation and alleged violations of campaign finance law.

Trump on Thursday attacked James as well as Underwood and her processor, Eric Schneiderman, who resigned amid accusations of physical abuse. Trump accused them of targeting him for political purposes.

Trump also criticized James for not investigating the Clinton Foundation — the charity founded by his former 2016 Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, and former President Bill Clinton.

“It has been 4 years of politically motivated harassment – first by lightweight AG Schneiderman, prior to his resignation for beating up women – then AG Underwood, who was impossible to deal with, and now AG Letitia James, who does not acknowledge that we gave 100% of the funds to great charities, but refuses to investigate the Clinton Foundation with all of its problems,” Trump said.  

Trump also said he would be “happy to donate” $2 million to eight charities, namely Army Emergency Relief; Children’s Aid Society; City Meals on Wheels; Give an Hour; Martha’s Table; United Negro College Fund; United Way of Capital Area; and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Thursday’s order came after the foundation agreed in December to dissolve under court supervision as part of agreement with the state attorney general’s office. In the order, Scarpulla wrote that the parties agreed to a “consensual resolution of the bulk of this proceeding” in October that left it up to her to determine the amount Trump would pay in damages.  

James positioned the order as a major victory for her office. 

[The Hill]

Trump fumes about Cuomo, New York A.G. over state investigations

President Donald Trump on Monday accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of using the state’s attorney general, Letitia James to target his businesses for political purposes, claiming in an afternoon tweet storm that the state sues “for everything” and is “always in search of a crime.”

“It is very hard and expensive to live in New York,” Trump began. “Governor Andrew Cuomo uses his Attorney General as a bludgeoning tool for his own purposes. They sue on everything, always in search of a crime. I even got sued on a Foundation which took Zero rent & expenses & gave away more money than it had.”

Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Cuomo said Monday that he had not yet seen Trump’s tweets, but added “nothing that man can say can surprise me.”

“He says the most absurd things,” Cuomo said, adding that Trump’s “strength is not fact or truth.”

Hillary Clinton also fired back, defending the Clinton Foundation and noting that the New York Attorney General had found that the president’s own foundation engaged in a “shocking pattern of illegality.”

The governor said the only person who has increased taxes on the state is the president, through his tax bill’s elimination of state and local tax — known as SALT — deductions for higher-taxed states.

“He doesn’t understand how government works,” Cuomo said, adding that “maybe his attorney general is a tool” and noting that the New York attorney general is elected.

“His suggestion that it’s my attorney general is incorrect,” he said.

Of the state investigation, Cuomo said of Trump, “If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to worry about.”

James tweeted soon after on Monday afternoon, saying that as “the elected AG of NY, I have a sworn duty to protect & uphold state law.”

“My office will follow the facts of any case, wherever they lead,” she continued. “Make no mistake: No one is above the law, not even the President. P.S. My name is Letitia James. (You can call me Tish.)”

Late last year Trump’s charitable foundation agreed to dissolve and give away its assets to other nonprofit organizations as a result of the New York attorney general probe, which began under Eric Schneiderman. At the time, Schneiderman’s successor as attorney general, Barbara Underwood, said the nonprofit had exhibited a “shocking pattern” of illegality.

That deal did not stop the civil lawsuit Underwood filed against the foundation last year from proceeding. The New York attorney general’s office continued to seek nearly $3 million in restitution and additional fines as part of the suit, as well as a ban on Trump’s leading a New York nonprofit for the next decade and placing one-year bans on the charity’s other board members, which include the president’s adult children.

Trump has repeatedly clashed with Schneiderman through the years and later publicly criticized Underwood and James, claiming their investigations were politically motivated. The office has led significant investigations into not only his charity, but also into Trump University, the president’s defunct real estate education venture.

Shortly after her election in November, James, a Democrat, vowed to “use every area of the law” to probe Trump, his family and associates, and his business. The office of attorney general has sweeping investigatory and prosecutorial powers to do just that.

Earlier this year, James subpoenaed Trump’s banks, seeking information about the Trump Organization and the president’s finances. Trump dismissed those efforts as “presidential harassment” and tweeted that James “openly campaigned on a GET TRUMP agenda.”

James opened that probe, a civil inquiry, after Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney, testified to Congress in February that Trump inflated the worth of his assets in financial statements that he provided to banks to secure loans.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that people and businesses are leaving New York state in record numbers. It’s true that people are leaving New York state in record numbers — according to Census data — but it’s hard to gauge departing businesses. There’s some anecdotal evidence that some businesses might be leaving the Big Apple, but there is also evidence that more than 10,000 businesses open and close each year in the state

[NBC News]

On Twitter, Trump Defends Foundation, Ignores Legal Controversy Surrounding It

President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday night to defend the charitable foundation he has pledged to close, saying the media had not given him enough credit for his generosity and ignoring the legal issues that ensnared the organization in controversy.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation has come under intense scrutiny this year after reports in The Washington Post detailing its practices, including cases in which Trump apparently used the charity’s money to settle lawsuits involving his for-profit businesses.

New York’s attorney general is investigating the charity, and a spokeswoman for that office said on Saturday that the foundation could not officially shut down until that probe is over. Among the issues at hand is whether Trump violated a “self-dealing” provision that says nonprofit leaders cannot use their charity’s funds to help themselves, their relatives or their businesses.

“I gave millions of dollars to DJT Foundation, raised or recieved millions more, ALL of which is given to charity, and media won’t report!” Trump said in one Monday night tweet.

“The DJT Foundation, unlike most foundations, never paid fees, rent, salaries or any expenses. 100% of money goes to wonderful charities!” the president-elect said in another.

Trump and his companies gave about $6 million to his foundation since its launch in 1987, according to tax filings. The most recent tax filings go up to the end of 2015.

Other people have collectively given about $9.5 million. The biggest outside donors were Vince and Linda McMahon, two pro-wrestling moguls, who gave the Trump Foundation $5 million between 2007 and 2009. Trump recently nominated Linda McMahon to head the Small Business Administration.

Trump himself gave nothing to his foundation between 2009 and 2014, according to filings. His businesses contributed in 2015 for the first time in several years.

Experts on charities say it’s rare for the founder of a private, name-branded foundation to give nothing to his own foundation while relying entirely on donations from others. That anomaly allowed Trump to take advantage of the idea that the money in the foundation was his.

Trump’s donations to his foundation are also small, by the standards of billionaires’ philanthropy.

Filmmaker George Lucas, for instance, who is tied with Trump at 324th place in Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires, donated $925 million to his family foundation in 2012. In 2014, Lucas’s foundation gave out $55 million in donations to museums, hospitals, artistic groups and environmental charities.

While much of the Trump foundation’s money has gone to charity, there are some high-profile exceptions.

In 2013, the Trump foundation gave a $25,000 gift to a campaign committee backing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) even though nonprofits like the charity are not allowed to give political gifts.

That gift was made as Bondi’s office was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. A consultant who worked on Bondi’s reelection effort has said that Bondi was not aware of the allegations when she solicited the donation from Trump. Ultimately, Bondi’s office did not pursue the fraud allegations.

Trump also reported using foundation money to buy items for himself, which runs afoul of federal tax law.

The Trump Foundation spent $30,000 to buy two large portraits of Trump himself, including one that was hung up in the sports bar at a Trump-owned resort. Trump also appears to have used $258,000 of his foundation’s money — legally earmarked for charitable purposes — to settle lawsuits involving two of his for-profit clubs.

The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) announced its investigation of the Trump Foundation after reports in The Post described such apparent cases of self-dealing that date back to 2007.

Trump’s foundation has admitted in IRS tax filings for 2015 that it violated a prohibition against “self-dealing” that says nonprofit leaders cannot use their charity’s funds to help themselves, their relatives or their businesses.

In these tax filings, the charity checked “yes” in response to a question asking whether it had transferred any income or assets to “a disqualified person” — a description that could have meant Trump, a relative or a Trump-owned business.

Trump has not said what exactly he did to violate the rule, or what he has paid the IRS in penalty taxes as a result. The IRS has not commented when asked whether it was investigating the Trump Foundation.

The New York attorney general’s investigation is unlikely to lead to any kind of criminal charge. Instead, Trump may be required to repay his foundation the money it spent to help him, and he may have to personally pay penalty taxes worth 10 percent or more of the value of the self-dealing transactions.

Trump’s tweet was correct in that his foundation has low overhead. It has no paid staff, and only a five-member board. It also has spent almost nothing on legal fees, raising the question of whether the organization was aware of the legal problems it created.

Trump Foundation Admits to Self-Dealing in New Tax Filing

President-elect Donald Trump’s charitable foundation transferred assets to a disqualified person, possibly Trump himself, according to a 2015 tax filing submitted to the nonprofit watchdog group GuideStar and posted online Tuesday.

Trump has been under heavy scrutiny in recent months for using tax-exempt foundation money to pay for personal expenses, such as legal settlements with governments and personal expenses, including paintings of himself.

On page five of the Donald J. Trump foundation’s 2015 tax filing, the preparers checked the “yes” box to the question about whether the New York-based nonprofit organization had transferred “any income or assets to a disqualified person (or make any of either available for the benefit or use of a disqualified person.”

The preparers checked yes again in another box that asked if the foundation had transferred money to disqualified people in previous years. Trump signed past filings under penalty of perjury, and the forms for several earlier years indicated the foundation had not transferred money to a disqualified person.

The IRS Manual states that transactions involving a disqualified person “bears importantly upon the treatment and status of exempt organizations as private foundations in several situations.”

It was unclear Tuesday whether the nation’s tax agency had received an identical document from Trump’s nonprofit. The IRS said it could not discuss any tax filing or comment on whether the tax agency was investigating the person or organization associated with a filing.

Trump presidential transition spokespersons also did not immediately respond to questions from USA TODAY.

However, the apparent admission of self-dealing “could be assessed as an IRS penalty against the person who received the benefit, potentially at three times the value,” said Robert McKenzie, a tax law expert who is a partner at the Arnstein & Lehr law firm in Chicago.

The IRS potentially could also seek penalties against the directors of the foundation — who include Trump and three of his children — “for allowing such a transaction,” said McKenzie.

However, attorneys for charitable organizations often are able to negotiate lower penalties than those proposed by the IRS, said McKenzie.

The foundation’s new admission could potentially result in separate penalties by state agencies that oversee the nonprofit, added McKenzie. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had been conducting an examination of filings submitted by Trump’s charitable organization.

That investigation is continuing, Amy Spitalnick, Schneiderman’s press secretary, said Tuesday.

Schneiderman last month ordered the foundation to cease any fundraising in New York, saying the charity had not filed the required registration with his office.

The New York official also demanded, and received, written confirmation that the foundation would pay no part of the $25 million settlement reached last week over fraud allegations against Trump University — the now-defunct real estate training program created by the billionaire developer and reality television star.

According to Guidestar spokesperson Jackie Enterline Fekeci, the new tax filing was “was uploaded by a representative from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP directly onto the foundation’s GuideStar Nonprofit Profile on November 18. We allow organizations to submit their 990’s voluntarily because sometimes the form’s route through the IRS causes a delay before we get the officially filed version. We do that in the good faith that the version they upload onto GuideStar is identical to the version they submit to the IRS.”

The Washington Post has reported in great detail about problems with the Trump foundation and its spending, citing how it paid $258,000 in foundation money to settle Trump’s personal legal issues. The Post was the first to report on the new filings Tuesday.

The 2015 tax filing showed that Trump’s company donated $566,370 to the foundation last year, while it received another $50,000 from Trump Productions LLC.

It’s possible these contributions came from Trump, because they listed the donations as coming from a “person.” These contributions are the first that Trump or his companies have made to Trump’s own charity since 2008. His foundation’s tax return for 2008 showed a $30,000 contribution from Donald J. Trump, care of The Trump Organization.

The foundation’s new filing also show the nonprofit received $150,000 from the British office of a foundation run by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who owns four Ukrainian television stations and a variety of industrial companies. Pinchuk and his foundation were donors to the foundation run by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the defeated Democratic nominee for president, Clinton Foundation records show.

Trump spoke at a conference in Ukraine in 2015 hosted by Pinchuk. Then, according to a report in Politico, he said: “Viktor, by the way, is a very, very special man, a special entrepreneur. When he was up seeing me I said, ‘I think I can learn more from you than you can learn from me.’”

(h/t USA Today)

Links

Trump Foundation 2015 990 form

Trump’s “Charity” Gave $10,000 Quack Anti-Vaccination Group

Donald Trump has spent years indulging in anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, so it’s little surprise that his shady “charity” foundation donated a chunk of cash to one of the nation’s biggest anti-vaccination campaigns.

The Daily Beast reports that in 2010, the Trump Foundation gave $10,000 to Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue, a nonprofit group whose primary goal is to promote false links between vaccinations and autism.

“McCarthy’s charity promotes ‘alternative vaccination physicians’ and has a grant program to provide families with autistic children with vitamins, minerals, and supplements; urine testing; and ‘dietary intervention training,’” The Daily Beast notes.

None of the claims that Generation Rescue makes about vaccinations have any basis in scientific reality, and its “alternative” methods for disease prevention have not proven effective.

(h/t Raw Story)

Reality

A little back story… way back in 1998 there was a Doctor called Andrew Wakefield who published a study in the well-respected medical journal The Lancet that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. Funny thing about well-respected scientific journals is, people in your field of study read your paper and try to duplicate the results, this is called peer-review. Nobody could duplicate the results so people became suspicious. Looking harder they found a sub-standard sample size of only 13 subjects, many subjects who already showed signs of autism at the start of the study, discovered data that was fraudulently modified, uncovered plans by Wakefield exploit the new market he created by profiting from his findings, and a discovered conflict of interest. Every single study that has been performed in regards to vaccines and autism continues to find no link between the two. In short Doctor Wakefield is now Mr. Wakefield and can never study medicine again and vaccines remain one of the greatest discoveries of human history.

Just like Mr. Trump, you probably have one friend, who is not a doctor or scientist, who has some story that might shed doubt in your mind that vaccines do cause autism. Think about this; That is just one story versus the vast body of evidence in well-performed scientific studies over decades of time, all publicly available to read, and all show absolutely no link. Know anyone with polio? Know anyone who died from smallpox? I’ll bet good money the answer is no. Thank you vaccines. And thank you evidence-based science.

There should be zero surprise that year after year we experience outbreaks of vaccine preventable disease in the areas that have the lowest vaccination rates where many adults and children die. We’re not at all implying that Donald Trump or Jenny McCarthy is responsible for these deaths. What we are saying is that when you are a leader and you go around promoting dangerous conspiracy theories, what you are doing is reinforcing someone’s deeply held beliefs and this makes it all the more harder for them to accept new factual information. It is very irresponsible and dangerous on the part of Donald Trump to propagate these false claims.

Trump Foundation Lacks Certification To Operate As Charity

The Trump Foundation, which is under investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office, never obtained the necessary certification to solicit money from the public during its nearly 30-year existence, an investigation by the state’s attorney general’s office has found, a source briefed on the investigation tells ABC News.

New York State law requires any charity that solicits more than $25,000 a year from the public to obtain a specific kind of certification.

The allegation about the Donald J. Trump Foundation’s lack of certification, first reported by the Washington Post, comes about two weeks after New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman — a Hillary Clinton supporter — announced he had opened a broad inquiry into the foundation.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment and the AG’s office declined comment.

In a statement released when the inquiry was announced earlier this month, Trump campaign Jason Miller blasted Schneiderman.

“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,” he said. This is nothing more than another left-wing hit job designed to distract from Crooked Hillary Clinton’s disastrous week.”

Tax forms for the foundation list Trump as its president and Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Organization, as the treasurer. As of 2006, Trump’s three eldest children -— Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump —- have been listed as directors of the charity.

The broad inquiry into the foundation focused on a $25,000 donation the organization gave to a group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. The donation drew scrutiny because Bondi’s office declined to join a lawsuit against Trump’s now-shuttered Trump University.

Both Trump and Bondi have denied the allegations or any impropriety. But Trump did pay a $2,500 fine to the IRS because charities are not allowed to give to political causes. Trump also reimbursed the foundation $25,000

As ABC News previously reported, the foundation’s financial forms for 2001 through 2014 are currently available.

The biggest contributor from 2011 to 2014 was Richard Ebers, a man associated with an event-ticketing company, Inside Sports and Entertainment, according to the 990 forms.

Ebers donated more than $1.8 million to the foundation from 2011 to 2014, and he was the largest contributor each of those years.

(h/t ABC News)

Evidence Shows Trump Violated Laws, Used His Charity as a Slush-Fund

The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold on Tuesday published a series of stunning revelations about Donald Trump’s charitable foundation, reporting that the Republican presidential nominee used money from the Trump Foundation to pay legal fees related to his businesses.

The report, citing tax records, said Trump had not made a single donation to his charity since 2008 and sometimes used money from others through the foundation to pay off legal expenses.

The money relating to those expenses, which reportedly amounted to $258,000 from the Trump Foundation, may have violated “self-dealing” laws that prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money for self-benefit or the benefit of their for-profit businesses, according to The Post.

“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington, told The Post, later describing the details as “really shocking.”

“If he’s using other people’s money – run through his foundation – to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I’ve seen in a while,” he continued.

Trump could be found in violation of self-dealing rules from the Internal Revenue Service, The Post said, which could require him to pay penalties or reimburse the foundation’s money. He is also facing scrutiny from the New York attorney general’s office, The Post added, which could find him in violation of the state’s charity laws.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign fired off a response to the Post story soon after it was published.

“Clearly the Trump Foundation is as much a charitable organization as Trump University is an institute of higher education,” Christina Reynolds, the campaign’s deputy communications director, said in a statement. “Trump’s version of charity is taking money from others to settle his own legal issues and buy at least two pictures of himself, which experts say is a clear violation of laws governing charitable organizations.”

“Once again, Trump has proven himself a fraud who believes the rules don’t apply to him,” she continued. “It’s past time for him to release his tax returns to show whether his tax issues extend to his own personal finances.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.

Here are some of the other revelations from Fahrenthold:

  • Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach stemming from a dispute over the size of a flagpole. The tallest a flagpole could be in Palm Beach was 42 feet, but Trump insisted on an 80-foot pole, claiming that “you don’t need a permit to put up the American flag.” The town agreed to waive the fines if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific veterans charity. But Trump instead sent a check from his foundation, Fahrenthold reported.
  • Trump’s New York golf courses agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff’s chosen charity, but the $158,000 donation was instead made by the Trump Foundation, according to The Post. The lawsuit was filed after a man, Martin Greenberg, hit a hole-in-one on the 13th hole at Trump’s Westchester, New York, golf course during a charity tournament, briefly winning $1 million, which was taken away after it was revealed that the shot did not travel a required 150 yards. Trump’s course was accused of intentionally making the hole too short.
  • Trump spent $30,000 of foundation money on two portraits of himself, one was found hanging in a Trump resort which is clearly not a charitable use.
  • Trump spent $5,000 of foundation money to buy advertisements for his hotel chain.
  • Trump spent $12,000 of foundation money to buy a football helmet signed by former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.

(h/t Business Insider)

Trump’s Charitable Giving Is Not His Own Personal Cash

Trump golfing in the rain

Since the first day of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has said that he gave more than $102 million to charity in the past five years.

To back up that claim, Trump’s campaign compiled a list of his contributions — 4,844 of them, filling 93 pages.

But, in that massive list, one thing was missing.

Not a single one of those donations was actually a personal gift of Trump’s own money.

Instead, according to a Washington Post analysis, many of the gifts that Trump cited to prove his generosity were free rounds of golf, given away by his courses for charity auctions and raffles.

The largest items on the list were not cash gifts but land-
conservation agreements to forgo development rights on property Trump owns.

Trump’s campaign also counted a parcel of land that he’d given to New York state — although that was in 2006, not within the past five years.

In addition, many of the gifts on the list came from the charity that bears his name, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which didn’t receive a personal check from Trump from 2009 through 2014, according to the most recent public tax filings. Its work is largely funded by others, although Trump decides where the gifts go.

Some beneficiaries on the list are not charities at all: They included clients, other businesses and tennis superstar Serena Williams.

This list produced by Trump’s campaign — which has not been reported in detail before — provides an unusually broad portrait of Trump’s giving, and his approach to philanthropy in general.

It reveals how Trump has demonstrated less of the soaring, world-changing ambitions in his philanthropy than many other billionaires. Instead, his giving appears narrowly tied to his business and, now, his political interests.

His foundation, for example, frequently gave money to groups that paid to use Trump’s facilities, and it donated to conservatives who could help promote Trump’s rise in the Republican Party. The foundation’s second-biggest donation described on the campaign’s list went to the charity of a man who had settled a lawsuit with one of Trump’s golf courses after being denied a hole-in-one prize.

The tally of Trump’s giving was provided by Trump’s campaign last year to the Associated Press, which was attempting to assess Trump’s recent record of charitable giving. The AP, which did not publish the list, provided it to The Post.

When asked about The Post’s analysis, a top Trump aide acknowledged that none of the gifts had come in cash from the billionaire himself. But, he said, that was because the list was not a complete account of Trump’s gifts.

The aide, Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, said Trump had, in fact, given generously from his own pocket. But Weisselberg declined to provide any documentation, such as saying how much charitable giving Trump has declared in his federal tax filings.

“We want to keep them quiet,” said Weisselberg, who is also treasurer of the Trump Foundation. “He doesn’t want other charities to see it. Then it becomes like a feeding frenzy.”

‘The Grateful Millionaire’

In the early years of his career — when Trump was making a name as America’s human embodiment of success — he was known for acts of real, and well-publicized, philanthropy.

In 1986, Trump heard about a Georgia farmer who’d committed suicide because of an impending foreclosure. He reached out.

“He said, ‘Forget it. I’ll pay it off.’ He paid for it out of his personal money,” said Betsy Sharp, the daughter of the farmer, Leonard Hill III. Trump flew the family to Trump Tower to burn the hated mortgage in front of TV cameras, with an ebony cigarette lighter that said “New York.”

Through a combination of good deeds and good publicity, the idea of Trump as a gallant friend of the little guy caught on. By the late 1990s, as documented by the debunking site Snopes.com, Trump’s name had been grafted onto a classic American urban legend, known to folklorists as “The Grateful Millionaire.”

Trump — it was said in email chains and books of inspirational stories — had once been stranded in a limo. A good Samaritan stopped to help. Trump secretly paid off his mortgage. The legend goes back to at least 1954, when the grateful millionaire was Henry Ford.

The most complete public accounting of Trump’s actual charity so far is the $102 million list provided by his campaign last year, titled “Donald J. Trump Charitable Contributions.”

In places, it appears to be an unedited mash-up of internal lists kept by Trump’s golf clubs, noting all the things they’d given away to anybody. True charities like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children are followed by freebies given away at sales meetings, followed by entries in cryptic internal shorthand. At a Trump golf course in Miami, for instance, the recipient of a $800 gift was listed only as “Brian.”

To identify what the gifts represented, The Post interviewed recipients to find out what they’d received — and matched those gifts to others with the exact same dollar value.

By extrapolation, The Post estimated that Trump claimed credit for at least 2,900 free rounds of golf, 175 free hotel stays, 165 free meals and 11 gift certificates to spas.

“I thought it would be a pretty hot ticket, [and] it was,” said Marion Satterthwaite, who runs a charity that helps bring back dogs that U.S. service members have bonded with overseas. She was holding a silent auction, and one of things she auctioned off was a free round of golf donated by Trump’s private golf club in Colts Neck, N.J. At that club, Trump appeared to claim donations of 76 foursomes, each valued at $1,720. Satterthwaite said that, in her case, it sold for less.

But Trump’s list was also riddled with apparent errors, in which the “charities” that got his gifts didn’t seem to be charities at all.

Trump listed a donation to “Serena William Group” in February 2015, valued at exactly $1,136.56. A spokeswoman for the tennis star said she had attended a ribbon-
cutting at Trump’s Loudoun County, Va., golf course that year for a new tennis center. But Trump hadn’t donated to her charity. Instead, he had given her a free ride from Florida on his plane and a free framed photo of herself.

The Post sent an annotated version of this list — showing the results of its analysis, and its extrapolations about what each gift represented — to the Trump campaign, along with a detailed list of questions about Trump’s giving.

The Trump campaign declined to answer most of the questions or to provide an interview with Trump.

The Post’s analysis showed that the small giveaways from Trump businesses seemed to account for the bulk of the 4,844 transactions that Trump took credit for. But they accounted for only about $6.4 million of the total dollar figure.

The most expensive charitable contributions on Trump’s list, by contrast, dealt with transactions related to real estate.

For one, Trump counted $63.8 million of unspecified “conservation easements.” That refers to legal arrangements — which could bring tax breaks — in which a landowner agrees to forgo certain kinds of development on land that he owns. In California, for example, Trump agreed to an easement that prevented him from building homes on a plot of land near a golf course. But Trump kept the land, and kept making money off it. It is a driving range.

In this election, neither of Trump’s Republican rivals — Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) nor Ohio Gov. John Kasich — has detailed his recent charitable giving. Among the Democrats, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said she and her husband gave 11 percent of their yearly income, and the Clintons have also established a foundation that has collected $2 billion for charity around the world, while also increasing their global celebrity and political network. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) said he gave 5 percent of his yearly income.

Trump has not entirely given up making splashy public gifts.

In 2009, for instance, Trump appeared on the TV show “Extra” and promised that he would pay a struggling viewer’s bills. “This is really a bad time for a lot of people,” Trump said as the contest was announced.

The winner, who got $5,000, was a woman who runs a spray-tanning business.

But the contest’s rules, posted online, made clear that the winner would not be flown to New York like the family Trump helped in the 1980s. Moreover, the rules said, the winner would have to pay for cab fare.

“The winner must live in New York, provide their own transportation to Trump Tower, and be willing to meet Donald on-camera to accept his check,” the rules warned.

According to tax records, the winner’s check came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, the charity created by Trump in the late 1980s. The same was true on Saturday, when Trump made a well-publicized $100,000 gift to the ­National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York. The foundation gave the money after Trump made a brief visit to the museum as he campaigned ahead of next week’s New York primary.

The Trump Foundation

On the $102 million list created by Trump’s campaign, he claims credit for $7 million given by the foundation, where Trump serves as president.

The biggest donors to his foundation in recent years have been other people, most notably Vince and Linda McMahon, top executives at World Wrestling Entertainment. They donated $5 million after Trump made a cameo on “Wrestlemania” in 2007, according to a spokesman for WWE. The spokesman said Trump was paid separately for the appearance. Linda McMahon has since left WWE and is now active in politics. She and her husband both declined to comment about the donation.

Trump’s foundation has operated on a smaller scale than some run by his billionaire peers. Filmmaker George Lucas, for instance, who is tied with Trump at 324th place in Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires, donated $925 million to his family foundation in 2012. In 2014, Lucas’s foundation gave out $55 million in donations to museums, hospitals, artistic groups and environmental charities.

Media magnate Sumner Redstone, also tied with Trump in the Forbes rankings, gave $28 million from his company to his foundation that year, and the foundation in turn gave out $31 million in gifts.

The Trump Foundation gave out $591,000 in 2014.

“He’s using [the foundation] as a kind of checkbook, with other people’s money,” Leslie Lenkow­sky, a faculty member at Indiana University’s school of philanthropy, said after The Post described the recipients of the Trump Foundation’s gifts.

“Not a good model. It’s not wrong. It’s not unique. But it’s poor philanthropy.”

In 2013, Trump was trying to persuade the V Foundation — a cancer-fighting group founded by Jim Valvano, the college basketball coach who died in 1993 — to hold a fundraiser at his Trump Winery in Virginia.

Trump’s foundation gave $10,000 to the V Foundation that summer, just when the V Foundation later said it was being wooed. He got the fundraiser.

Trump’s foundation also gave to the American Cancer Society, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, all of which have held fundraisers at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.

In 2010, a man named Martin Greenberg was playing in a charity tournament at Trump’s course in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. A $1 million prize was offered to anybody who got a hole in one.

Greenberg did. But then, hours later, he was called back. The rules said the hole-in-one shot had to go 150 yards. But, according to court documents, Trump’s course had made the hole too short.

Greenberg got nothing. He sued.

On the day that Trump and the other parties told the court that they had settled the case, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made its first and only donation to the Martin B. Greenberg Foundation, for $158,000. Both Greenberg and Trump’s campaign declined to comment.

Trump also used the foundation’s money to play the role of a big-hearted billionaire on TV — doling out at least $194,000 to various causes favored by contestants on “Celebrity Apprentice,” Trump’s spinoff reality show that appeared on NBC.

In 2012, NBC Universal made a $500,000 donation to the Trump Foundation. NBC Universal declined to comment about that gift.

In some cases, the recipient was a complete stranger: a club member who stopped him at the pool, another golfer, or a woman who’d just walked into his office.

“I’ll never forget. He said, ‘Debra, you have the ‘it’ factor. He said, ‘I don’t know any other beautiful woman going into the inner city,’ ” said Debra George, a Christian minister in Texas who met Trump when a mutual friend brought her along to his office. Trump asked how she paid for her work.

“It’s kind of like walking on air. We trust God,” she told him. “He said, ‘I’m going to help you.’ ” Trump’s foundation gave her charity $10,000.

Some recipients said they liked the Trump Foundation’s informal approach to giving. “(At) a lot of foundations, you know, there’s a grant process,” said Barbara Abernathy, whose charity helps children with cancer. Not Trump, whom Abernathy had met at a Mar-a-Lago gala. She later asked his people for money, to help a patient’s family afford medicine and a car payment. She got $1,000 in two weeks.”

In 2013, Scott K. York, then the head of the Board of Supervisors in Loudoun County, came to Trump’s son to ask for help. An elementary school in the county needed a $110,000 handicapped-accessible playground. York asked for $10,000. Trump’s foundation gave $7,500.

A month later, the Trump Foundation gave $50,000 to the American Conservative Union Foundation. With donations to that group, Politico has reported, Trump was building a relationship that won him prime speaking slots at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a coveted venue for an aspiring Republican presidential candidate.

In this campaign, Trump said he brought in more than $6 million during a fundraiser for veterans groups he held on Jan. 28 in Iowa.

But the Trump campaign has detailed only about $3 million worth of donations that have been given to veterans groups. Some were given directly by donors recruited by Trump, and in some cases, the Trump Foundation served as a middleman.

Trump’s campaign has said that Trump is continuing to identify and vet new recipients for the money but declined to provide additional details.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks declined to respond to questions regarding whether Trump has followed through on a pledge to donate $1 million of his own money to the cause.

Still, as he has campaigned, Trump has benefited from a reputation for generosity.

“His limousine broke down one time, a couple stopped and helped him. He paid off their mortgage a few days later. These are all things that you never hear about Donald Trump,” Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, said on Fox News’s “Hannity” in January.

The Grateful Millionaire. The legend, alive and well.

In a telephone interview, Falwell, who has endorsed Trump, was asked: Did you ever ask Trump if that story was true?

“I never did,” Falwell said. “But, Trey, didn’t you search that on Google?”

“I didn’t,” his son Trey said. “But somebody did.”

“It was in some publication in 1995,” the elder Falwell concluded. “But I forget which publication.”

(h/t Washington Post)